Long before the invention of the phonograph, the written word was unrivaled as a medium of the human voice. In The Ancient Phonograph, Shane Butler takes us back to an […]
Like us, the ancient Greeks and Romans came to know and understand the world through their senses. Yet sensory experience has rarely been considered in the study of antiquity and, […]
This book offers a captivating new interpretation of Lucian as a fictional theorist and writer to stand alongside the novelists of the day, bringing to bear on his works a […]
Ancient and medieval literary texts often call attention to their existence as physical objects. Shane Butler helps us to understand why. Arguing that writing has always been as much a […]
This history restores Middle English literature to the rich culture that produced it by means of five unusual categories (technology, insurgency, statecraft, place, and jurisdiction). It also uses these categories […]
What was really going on at Roman banquets? In this lively new book, veteran Romanist Matthew Roller looks at a little-explored feature of Roman culture: dining posture.
Angelo Poliziano (1454–1494) was one of the great scholar-poets of the Italian Renaissance and the leading literary figure of the Age of Lorenzo de’ Medici, “il Magnifico.” His correspondence gives […]
The centuries just after the Norman Conquest are the forgotten period of English literary history. In fact, the years 1066-1300 witnessed an unparalleled ingenuity in the creation of written forms, […]
What did Antony want with Cicero’s hand? Hundreds perished in Rome’s Second Proscription, but one victim is remembered above all others. Cicero stands out, however, not only because of his […]
In this compelling book, Matthew Roller reveals a “dialogical” process at work, in which writers and philosophers vigorously negotiated and contested the nature and scope of the emperor’s authority, despite the consensus that he was the ultimate authority figure in Roman society.