Compitum

Fabio Stok (éd.), Totus scientia plenus: percorsi dell'esegesi virgiliana antica, Pise, 2013.

Éditeur : Edizioni ETS
Collection : Testi e studi di cultura classica
452 pages
ISBN : 9788846737823
43 €

Virgilio, come ha scritto Thomas S. Eliot, è il “classico” per eccellenza della cultura europea. La sua ininterrotta fortuna dura da oltre duemila anni: introdotto nell'insegnamento scolastico dal grammatico Cecilio Epirota,Virgilio venne letto, chiosato e commentato, nei secoli successivi, da numerosi grammatici ed eruditi. Di questa copiosa attività esegetica ci sono rimasti due commenti tardoantichi, quello di Servio e quello di Tiberio Donato. I saggi contenuti in questo volume esplorano vari aspetti di questa tradizione esegetica: problemi testuali, il metodo e la cultura dei commentatori, le loro finalità, i successivi rifacimenti. Per l'intera cultura tardoantica Virgilio fu totus scientia plenus, come lo definisce Servio: maestro di sapienza, esperto in tutte le discipline. Questa immagine tardoantica accompagnerà l'autore dell'Eneide nel corso del Medioevo ed ancora Dante sceglierà Virgilio come guida e dotto accompagnatore nei gironi dell'Inferno.

Source : Edizioni ETS

Antonio Stramaglia, [Quintiliano], L'astrologo (Declamazioni maggiori, 4), Cassino, 2013.

Éditeur : Edizioni Università di Cassino
Collection : Collana di studi umanistici
251 pages
ISBN : 8883170717
30 €

Source : Libreria universitaria

Alessandra Zanobi, Seneca's Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime, Londres-New York, 2013.

Éditeur : Bloomsbury Academic
xi, 282 pages
ISBN : 9781472511881
65 £

Pantomime was arguably the most popular dramatic genre during the Roman Empire, but has been relatively neglected by literary critics.

Seneca's Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime adds to our understanding of Seneca's tragic art by demonstrating that elements which have long puzzled scholars can be attributed to the influence of pantomime. The work argues that certain formal features which depart from the conventions of fifth-century Attic drama can be explained by the influence of, and interaction with, this more popular genre.
The work includes a detailed and systematic analysis of the specific pantomime-inspired features of Seneca's tragedies: the loose dramatic structure, the presence of “running commentaries” (minute descriptions of characters undergoing emotional strains or performing specific actions), of monologues of self-analysis, and of narrative set-pieces.

Relevant to the culture of Roman imperial culture more generally, Seneca's Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime includes an outline of the general features of pantomime as a genre. The work shows that the influence of sub-literary-genres such as pantomime and mime, the sister art of pantomime, can be traced in several Roman writers whose literary production was antecedent or contemporary with Seneca's. Furthermore, the work sheds light on the interaction between sub-literary genres of a performative nature such as mime and pantomime and more literary ones, an aspect of Latin culture which previous scholarship has tended to overlook.

Seneca's Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime provides an original contribution to the understanding of the impact of pantomime on Roman literary culture and of controversial and little-understood features of Senecan tragedies.

Source : Bloomsbury

Mantha Zarmakoupi, Designing for Luxury on the Bay of Naples Villas and Landscapes (c. 100 BCE - 79 CE), Oxford, 2013.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
Collection : Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representations
352 pages
ISBN : 978-0-19-967838-9
85 £

This study explores Roman luxury villa architecture and the Roman luxury villa lifestyle to shed light on the villas' design as a dynamic process related to cultural, social, and environmental factors. Roman villas expressed a novel architectural language which was developed by designers appropriating the existing stylistic and thematic vocabularies of Hellenistic and Roman architecture. Zarmakoupi seeks to describe and explain the ways in which this architecture accommodated the lifestyle of educated leisure and an appreciation of the Roman landscape, and how, in doing so, it became a cultural phenomenon and a crucial element in the construction of Roman cultural identity. In their effort to accommodate the Greek style, Romans created something completely unprecedented in the history of architecture. Through an analysis of five villas from around the bay of Naples (c. 100 BCE - 79 CE), the volume shows that in designing for luxury, Romans developed a sophisticated interplay between architecture and landscape, an interplay which is still seen in architectural design today.

Source : Oxford University Press

Arnaud Zucker, Encyclopédire. Formes de l'ambition encyclopédique dans l'Antiquité et au Moyen Âge, Turnhout, 2013.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Collection d'études médiévales de Nice
504 pages
ISBN : 978-2-503-55148-7
60 €

Au regard du modèle que représente l'Encyclopédie des Lumières, envisagée comme un aboutissement et non comme un commencement, plusieurs œuvres antiques et médiévales ont été perçues comme des préfigurations de ce comble du savoir. Les contributions réunies dans ce volume entendent réfléchir à la vocation profonde qui sous-tend, travaille et motive certains savants de l'Antiquité au Moyen Âge, construisant un horizon de savoir total et organisé.
L'ambition encyclopédique est dès lors la dynamique commune d'un programme de constitution d'un système du monde, où les sciences sont appelées à se coaliser pour former une culture rationnelle complète. Encyclopédire le monde, c'est engager son discours dans une perspective totalisante. Le défi majeur que porte une telle ambition est donc la synthèse des savoirs où se lient étroitement trois questions : les enjeux scientifiques d'une visée encyclopédique, les choix de transmission et d'intégration des savoirs, et les principes et mode d'organisation interne des œuvres.
Les auteurs de cet ouvrage se sont interrogés sur des œuvres ou des genres révélateurs de cette ambition, sur les formes et les expressions de ce syndrome ou complexe encyclopédiste, et sur les modalités de cette volonté d'encyclopédire que l'on suppose tenace, archaïque et profonde.

Source : Brepols

Matthew Drever, Image, Identity, and the Forming of the Augustinian Soul, Oxford, 2013.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
288 pages
ISBN : 978-0-19-991633-7
£ 47.99

In our current pluralist and often secular context, there is no clearly designated means of valuing or defining the human person. Matthew Drever shows that in the writings of St. Augustine we find a concept of the human person as fluid, tenuous, prone to great good and great vice, and influenced deeply by language, history, and society. Through examination of his account of the human relation to God, Drever demonstrates how Augustine may be regarded as a crucial resource for a religious reorientation and revaluation of the person.
Drever focuses particularly on the concepts of the imago dei and creatio ex nihilo, significant for their influence on Augustine's understanding of the human person and for their potential to bridge his and our own world. Though rooted in Augustine's early work, these concepts are developed fully in his later writings: his Genesis commentaries and On the Trinity in particular. Drever examines how in these later writings the origin (creatio ex nihilo) and identity (imago dei) of the human person intersect with Augustine's understanding of creation, Christ, and the Trinity.
Image, Identity, and the Forming of the Augustinian Soul constructs an interpretation of Augustine's view of the person that acknowledges its classical context while also addressing contemporary theological and philosophical appropriations of Augustine and the issues that animate them.