Compitum

Luca Grillo, The Art of Caesar's Bellum Civile , Cambridge, 2012.

Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
234 pages
ISBN : 9781107009493
£55.00

Traditional approaches have reduced Caesar's Bellum Civile to a tool for teaching Latin or to one-dimensional propaganda, thereby underestimating its artistic properties and ideological complexity. Reading strategies typical of scholarship on Latin poetry, like intertextuality, narratology, semantic, rhetorical and structural analysis, cast a new light on the Bellum Civile: Ciceronian language advances Caesar's claim to represent Rome; technical vocabulary reinforces the ethical division between 'us' and the 'barbarian' enemy; switches of focalization guide our perception of the narrative; invective and characterization exclude the Pompeians from the Roman community, according to the mechanisms of rhetoric; and the very structure of the work promotes Caesar's cause. As a piece of literature interacting with its cultural and socio-political world, the Bellum Civile participates in Caesar's multimedia campaign of self-fashioning. A comprehensive approach, such as has been productively applied to Augustus' program, locates the Bellum Civile at the interplay between literature, images and politics.

Michael D. Reeve, Manuscripts and Methods. Essays on Editing and Transmission, Rome, 2011.

Éditeur : Edizioni di storia e letteratura
Collection : Storia e letteratura, 270
xviii-434 pages
ISBN : 9788863723021
62,00 €

Michael Reeve's work since the mid 1970s on the textual traditions of classical authors has brought him into the forefront of debate on editorial aims and methods. From the outset he has championed both stemmatic method and historical approaches to manuscripts. He assembles here 18 articles, published from 1983 to 2009, in which he deals not so much with particular traditions as with methodological questions; two unpublished pieces are added. The collection ranges from the identification and status of autographs to the use of computer programmes for classifying witnesses; it includes comparative studies of genealogical classification in textual scholarship, historical linguistics, biology, and the analysis of ‘folk tales'.

H. Bellon-Méguelle, O. Collet, Y. Foehr-Janssens et L. Jaquiéry (éd.), La moisson des lettres. L'invention littéraire autour de 1300, Turnhout, 2012.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Texte, Codex & Contexte
399 pages
ISBN : 978-2-503-53592-0
€ 74

Cet ouvrage rassemble les contributions de chercheurs en histoire de la littérature et en histoire de l'art sur les innovations qui ont marqué les lettres et la production manuscrite dans les dernières décennies du XIIIe siècle et les premières du XIVe siècle (1270-1340) en France. Cette période charnière de l'histoire de la littérature médiévale a souffert jusqu'à présent d'un certain désintérêt de la critique et reste de ce fait encore méconnue. Comblant cette lacune, les auteurs de cette étude collective ont évalué le poids du passé littéraire chez des écrivains et des artistes revendiquant leur statut d'héritier mais montrant aussi la faculté de s'approprier la tradition et d'imposer leur originalité. Ils ont mis en lumière les particularités et les innovations de la période tant au niveau des méthodes de traduction, qu'à celui des genres littéraires, des formes poétiques ou artistiques, ils ont étudié enfin les milieux politiques qui ont soutenu alors une production littéraire et manuscrite digne d'intérêt.

C. Meyer et S. Nishimagi, Tractatuli, excerpta et fragmenta de musica s. XI et XII, Turnhout, 2012.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Atelier de recherche sur les textes médiévaux
462 pages
ISBN : 978-2-503-54030-6
€ 85

Cet ouvrage est le fruit d'un travail entrepris au début de l'année 2007, soutenu par l'idée de mettre à la disposition des chercheurs un ensemble de petits traités et extraits sur la musique conservés dans les sources manuscrites des XIe et XIIe siècles susceptible de préciser l'histoire des théories de la musique au cours de ces deux siècles et leurs implications pour la pratique du chant liturgique. A ce titre, tous ces textes sont indissociables des “grands” traités de musique de l'ère carolingienne jusqu'au XIIe siècle – la Musica enchiriadis, le Dialogus de musica, les écrits de Guy d'Arezzo, la préface à l'antiphonaire de Bernon ou encore la Musica de Jean d'Afflighem – dont la diffusion fut considérable et qui ont largement contribué à façonner la théorie du chant liturgique du Moyen Age.

David W. Porter (éd.), The Antwerp–London Glossaries. The Latin ann–Old English Vocabularies from Antwerp, Turnhout, 2011.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Publications of the Dictionary of Old English
xii + 258 pages
ISBN : 978-0-88844-908-5
€ 75

The Antwerp-London Glossaries are eleventh-century descendents of the earliest school text in the English language. In their earliest form they played a central role at the seventh-century school of Canterbury; they contributed material to the fundamental texts, dated to the 600s, known as the Leiden Glossary and the Épinal-Erfurt glossary.

A varied collection with five distinguishable parts, the glossaries have at their heart a late Latin encyclopedia, the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. The longest glossary lists thousands of Isidorian headwords and gives definitions in Old English. A second long glossary with two alphabetical components has some material that is even older. In addition, two small lists share some material with these longer texts.

George Hardin Brown et Linda Ehrsam Voigts (éd.), The Study of Medieval Manuscripts of England. Festschrift in Honor of Richard W. Pfaff, Turnhout, 2011.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (ASMAR 35)
IX+438 p., 23 b/w ill.
ISBN : 978-2-503-53383-4
60 €

This volume contains sixteen important studies by widely respected scholars dealing with manuscripts produced in England in the Middle Ages.

The Study of Medieval Manuscripts of England: Festschrift in Honor of Richard Pfaff, edited by George Hardin Brown and Linda Ehrsam Voigts, consists of sixteen important studies, all dealing with manuscripts produced in medieval England. The first group reflects the meticulous analysis of liturgical manuscripts that characterize the honorand's career. These treat both early and late medieval liturgical concerns and include liturgy for Gilbertine lay brothers, a lost treatise by Amalarius, the re-working of an Anglo-Saxon Gospel book; the music for the Vigil of St. Thomas Becket; and the continuity of Processions from Old Sarum to Salisbury Cathedral. Two studies examine the liturgies having to do with saints in Sarum missals and breviaries. The second, historical, section of this volume includes three studies on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Six other analyses concern the high and later Middle Ages: an illuminated crusade manuscript; codicological evidence for revising the traditional dates associated with Gilbertus Anglicus's life and writing; evidence for Bishop William Reed's collection and donation of books to Oxford colleges in the later fourteenth century; anomalous writings in a sermon codex; the records of the private incomes of monks at Westminster Abbey; and a catalogue and analysis of medieval manuscripts containing moral philosophy.