This book offers timely contributions to the process of conceptualizing a Latin American specificity and its forms of integration in larger contexts, both on the level of thought and the level of political and social praxis. To produce a critical reading of philosophy while also developing a philosophy of criticism is essential in cultures that continue to struggle for the decolonization of both thought and life. This book allows Anglophone readers access to the world of ideas of some of (...) the most relevant Latin American thinkers of our age. Through a comprehensive discussion of the works and contexts of thinkers such as of José Carlos Mariátegui, Enrique Dussel, Bolívar Echeverría, and Roger Bartra to Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Peter Sloterdijk, Mabel Moraña demonstrates that Latin American thought has not only been inseparable from Western philosophy but also from the determinants of its history and social struggles. By doing so, Mabel Moraña provides an extensive perspective on the connections between historical moments, social structures, and discursive practices. With its interdisciplinary focus, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students in Latin American studies, comparative literature, world literature, and philosophy. (shrink)

Engaging existentialism: transformative possibilities and local agendas -- The Mexican existentialist ethos -- The seminal Mexican existentialism of Rodolfo Usigli's theater -- Excavating Comala: the existentialist Juan Rulfo, the Grupo Hiperión, and lo mexicano in Pedro Páramo -- "Christs for all passions": José Revuelta's El luto humano [Human mourning] -- Rosario Castellanos's freedom.

In classical Latin, luxuria means 'desire for luxury'; it is linked with the ideas of excess and deviation from a standard. It is in most cases labelled as a vice which contrasts with the innate frugal nature of the Romans. Latin authors do not see it as endemic but as an import from the East in the aftermath of military conquests--and as a cause of fatal decline. Following these etymological and semantic origins, Roman Luxuria: A Literary and Cultural (...) History discusses the influence of Greek culture on the Roman concept and the peculiar characteristics of Roman luxuria. It analyses Roman views on luxuria through close readings in historical order from Cato the Elder, who regards luxuria as the opposite of the ideal Roman way of life, to the Christian poet Prudentius, who represents it in an allegorical fight with Sobriety. The book attends both to key authors and to wider literary genres, such as historiography and satire. Particular consideration is given to the rhetorical device of personification, which can be traced from the first appearances of luxuria in Latin literature to those of late antiquity. Berno devotes detailed attention to Seneca the Younger, whose work is often preoccupied with this passion. Seneca both defends himself from the charge of luxuria and violently attacks it in others, describing it as the archenemy of a philosophical life. Along the centuries, the focus on luxuria shifts from the economic sphere (and the waste of money) to the erotic, to the extent that in the Christian world it becomes one of the Seven Capital Sins representing the vice of lust. (shrink)

It is important for the materialist historian, in the most rigorous way possible, to differentiate the construction of a historical state of affairs from what one customarily calls its "reconstruction." The "reconstruction" in empathy is one- dimensional. "Construction" presupposes "destruction." Almost fourteen years after the death of Jacques Derrida, the least one can say is that his inheritance is as contested and fraught with rivalries, rejections, and appropriations as at the time of the flowering of Deconstruction in American universities in (...) the seventies and eighties. A halt was observed in 1988-89 after the posthumous revelations about Paul de Man's past in Belgium and Derrida's embattled defense of his friend. Today, in France, one often hears that "Derrida a fait l'Ecole mais n'a pas fait ecole," meaning that Derrida passed the entrance examination of the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure where he taught for a long time, where he met Paul Celan, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault and many other luminaries, whereas he never had a real "school" in France-no real institutional backing beyond the various Parisian places at which he taught later, or those that he founded like the College de Philosophie; his following constituted of young philosophers, only a few of whom became university professors in their turn and disseminated his teachings. However, the mechanisms of power within the French university remained closed to Derrida until the end; besides, he wanted to prevent the stereotyped reproduction currently observed from master to disciple. (shrink)

In 1984 and 1985 Ralph Hall and I presented statistical methodologies, based on inductive statistics and the comparative method, to determine the rhythmical qualities of Latin prose from the third to early sixth century A.D. We continued our work with the publication of articles on the final clausulae in the legal codes and Augustine's letters and on rhythms in internal positions, while I produced studies of the clausulae in the Pseudo-Sallustiana and Ammianus.

This collection of new essays locates Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae in the medieval context of Latin learning and vernacular translations. The first part is devoted to the Latin commentary tradition, while the other parts explore the vernacular traditions.

The Critical Circle investigates the celebrated hermeneutic circle, especially as it manifests itself in historical inquiry and literary criticism. Formulated variously in different theories of hermeneutics, the circle generally describes how, in the process of understanding an interpretation, part and whole are related in a circular way: in order to understand the while, it is necessary to understand the parts, while to understand the parts it is necessary to have some comprehension of the whole. --from the Foreword.

In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites (...) us to reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

Commentaries in late antiquity were the predominant form of scholarly engagement with ancient, authoritative texts. Not only in Greek, but in Latin no less, ancient commentaries were an integral part of reading and understanding literature and philosophy (and theology, as part and parcel of philosophy at that time). I shall deal with commentaries (as self-standing works, different from glosses) on poetic, rhetorical, philosophical, and religious texts in Latin late antiquity, both ‘pagan’ and Christian. Grammatical and rhetorical education (...) played a remarkable role in their preparation, and questions of adaptation and of the reuse of earlier material, especially Greek models, will also come into play. (shrink)

Paperback. This volume contains a collection of papers on the philosophical and cultural background of Lucretius' De rerum natura. The authors, an international team of specialists, address such general questions as how Lucretius' poem relates to the Epicurean tradition, to other philosophical schools and to contemporary Roman intellectual life. In addition, a number of case studies are presented which discuss the background of particular passages in Lucretius' poem. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the areas (...) of ancient philosophy, Latin literature and Roman culture. (shrink)

While the therapeutic effect of post-classical philosophy in antiquity has recently been recognized, Cicero and his oeuvre have been mostly ignored in that respect, because he was deemed too compilatory and eclectic. However, the Tusculanae Disputationes are just that - a philosophical therapy for the soul that pervades all five books of this work - as is brought to light in this new interpretation. German text.

The volume gathers eleven studies on the intellectual exchanges during the Middle Ages among the three cultures which existed side by side in the same geographical area, i.e. the vast space from the British Isles to the Sahara Desert, and from the Douro Valley to the Hindu Kush. These three cultures – who may not be reduced to their confession or ethnicity – are historically related to each other in many respects, both material (trade, wars, marriages) and immaterial (the interdependence (...) among their religious narratives and their philosophical speculations). The studies herein presented focus on some peculiar examples of the transcultural interactions among exponents of the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin philosophical and theological traditions. While we do not want to downplay the fundamental role of the religious contexts, our focus on the linguistic denominations of these cultures aims at drawing attention to the conceptual medium, or rather media, which underlined and shaped the interactions and interplays among these traditions – interplays that were characterized by the contact of these three languages being used by people of different religious beliefs in their quest for knowledge: Spanish Jews writing in Arabic, Jews collaborating in the translation of Arabic texts into Latin through the vernacular, Western Muslims whose writings were read mainly by Jews and Christians in Hebrew and Latin. (shrink)

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

This book is designed to appeal both to those interested in Roman poetry and to specialists in ancient philosophy. In it David Sedley explores Lucretius ' complex relationship with Greek culture, in particular with Empedocles, whose poetry was the model for his own, with Epicurus, the source of his philosophical inspiration, and with the Greek language itself. He includes a detailed reconstruction of Epicurus' great treatise On Nature, and seeks to show how Lucretius worked with this as his sole philosophical (...) source, but gradually emancipated himself from its structure, transforming its raw contents into something radically new. By pursuing these themes, the book uncovers many unrecognised aspects of Lucretius ' methods and achievements as a poetic craftsman. (shrink)

The employment of mythological language and imagery by an Epicurean poet - an adherent of a system not only materialist, but overtly hostile to myth and poetry - is highly paradoxical. This apparent contradiction has often been ascribed to a conflict in the poet between reason and intellect, or to a desire to enliven his philosophical material with mythological digressions. This book attempts to provide a more positive assessment of Lucretius' aims and methodology by considering the poet's attitude to myth, (...) and the role which it plays in the De Rerum Natura, against the background of earlier and contemporary views. The author suggests that Lucretius was not only aware of the tension between his two roles as philosopher and poet, but attempted to resolve it by developing his own, Epicurean poetic, together with a bold and innovative theory of the origins and meaning of myth. (shrink)

Objective: To present a narrative review of the history of bioethics in Latin America and of scientific output in this interdisciplinary field. Methods: This was a mixed-methods study. Results: A total of 1458 records were retrieved, of which 1167 met the inclusion criteria. According to the Web of Science classification, the predominant topics of study were medical ethics, social sciences and medicine, and environmental and public health topics. Four themes of bioethics output in the Latin American (...) class='Hi'>literature have emerged: issues involving the beginning and end of life, ethics in human research, patient–provider relationships, and ethics training for health professionals. Conclusion: Although bioethics is a growing interdisciplinary field in Latin America, its academic impact is still very low, and programmes are highly concentrated in large urban centres in a few countries. Challenges includes the regional and international impact of local scientific output. (shrink)

This volume covers a relatively short span of time, rather less than the first three-quarters of the first century BC; but it was an age of profoundly important developments, with enduring consequences for the subsequent history of Latin literature. Original and innovative in widely differing ways as was the work of Lucretius, Sallust and Caesar in particular, the scene is dominated, historically, by two figures: Cicero and Catullus. Cicero was a politician and a man of affairs as (...) well as a man of latters, whose vast literary output reflects a range of intellectual interests unparalleled among surviving Roman writers; creator of a prose style the Quintilian regarded as synonymous with eloquence itself; and better known to us, from his letters, as a human being, than any other figure from classical antiquity. Catullus was a poet, single-mindedly devoted to fostering the tradition of learned Alexandrian poetry at Rome; the author of one slender volume of verse that has attracted more critical attention in proportion to its size than any other ancient poetry-book; and the lover of Lesbia. In these chapters it is shown how these, and other, Roman writers of genius continued the process of transforming their traditional Greek models into new and vigorous Latin forms, with lasting effects for oratory, historiography, and the higher genres of poetry. (shrink)

Une enigme litteraire - celle, posee par les textes prefaciels de Vitruve dans leur signification et leur date - qui se resout par une histoire de mots, l'histoire des mots latins du livre, dont la langue francaise et nombre de langues ...

What did it mean to keep a secret in early medieval England? It was a period during which the experience of secrecy was intensely bound to the belief that God knew all human secrets, yet the secrets of God remained unknowable to human beings. In Bonds of Secrecy, Benjamin A. Saltzman argues that this double-edged conception of secrecy and divinity profoundly affected the way believers acted and thought as subjects under the law, as the devout within monasteries, and as readers (...) before books. One crucial way it did so was by forming an ethical relationship between the self and the world that was fundamentally different from its modern reflex. Whereas today the bearers of secrets might be judged for the consequences of their reticence or disclosure, Saltzman observes, in the early Middle Ages a person attempting to conceal a secret was judged for believing he or she could conceal it from God. In other words, to attempt to hide from God was to become ensnared in a serious sin, but to hide from the world while deliberately and humbly submitting to God's constant observation was often a hallmark of spiritual virtue. Looking to law codes and religious architecture, hagiographies and riddles, Bonds of Secrecy shows how legal and monastic institutions harnessed the pervasive and complex belief in God's omniscience to produce an intense culture of scrutiny and a radical ethics of secrecy founded on the individual's belief that nothing could be hidden from God. According to Saltzman, this ethics of secrecy not only informed early medieval notions of mental activity and ideas about the mind but also profoundly shaped the practices of literary interpretation in ways that can inform our own contemporary approaches to reading texts from the past. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTo date, neo-Latin studies have been hardly concerned with the nineteenth century, let alone the twentieth century. It would seem that literature written in Latin had completely lost its significance. However, recent research has shown that Latin verses were still quantitatively and qualitatively important, even if they no longer enjoyed the same popularity as in previous centuries. This article is a synthesis of what we know about neo-Latin literature in nineteenth-century Europe. The first section (...) discusses the question of its quantitative and qualitative significance. Section 2 deals with the specific features of the neo-Latin literature in the nineteenth century. Section 3 presents the situation in Germany in order to give a more precise idea of the phenomenon. The aim of this article is to provide an impetus for further investigation in the field and to cast light on a facet of the nineteenth century that has long been forgotten. (shrink)

Against the background of intellectual and political debates in France during the 1950s and 1960s, Daniel Just examines literary narratives and works of literary criticism arguing that these texts are more politically engaged than they may initially appear. As writings by Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, Albert Camus, and Marguerite Duras show, seemingly disengaged literary principles - such as blankness, minimalism, silence, and indeterminateness - can be deployed to a number of potent political and ethical ends. At the time the main (...) focus of this activism was the escalation of violence in colonial Algeria. The poetics formulated by these writers suggests that blankness, weakness, and withdrawal from action are not symptoms of impotence and political escapism in the face of historical events, but deliberate literary strategies aimed to neutralize the drive to dominate others that characterized the colonial project. (shrink)

Lucretius' account of the origin of life, the origin of species, and human prehistory is the longest and most detailed account extant from the ancient world. It gives an anti-teleological mechanistic theory of zoogony and the origin of species that does away with the need for any divine aid or design in the process, and accordingly it has been seen as a forerunner of Darwin's theory of evolution. This commentary locates Lucretius in both the ancient and modern contexts, and treats (...) Lucretius' ideas as very much alive rather than as historical concepts. The recent revival of creationism makes this study particularly relevant to contemporary debate, and indeed, many of the central questions posed by creationists are those Lucretius attempts to answer. (shrink)

In the two centuries covered by this volume, from about AD 250 to 450, the Roman Empire suffered a period of chaos followed by drastic administrative and military reorganization. Simultaneously Christianity emerged as a new religious force, to be first recognized by Constantine and then eventually to become the official religion of the Roman state. The old pagan culture continued to provide the basis for education and the staple literary diet of the leisured classes; but it now had perforce to (...) coexist and indeed to compete with a new, specifically Christian-oriented literature. These and associated developments are reflected in the Latin books of the period. Of the traditional forms and genres, some atrophied, some were transformed and invigorated; and yet others, such as autobiography in something like the modern sense, emerged in response to the pressures of the times. Professor Browning's masterly and comprehensive survey is mostly concerned with pagan literature, but takes into account Christian texts written in classical forms and directed at classically educated readers. The volume ends with a chapter on Apuleius by Professor Walsh, followed by a brief Epilogue from the same hand, sketching the part played by classical studies in the formation of the Latin literature of the Middle Ages. (shrink)

'Perfection is finality; finality is death'. The poets and prose writers of the first and early second centuries AD were not deterred by the towering stature of their Augustan predecessors from attempting new and often brilliant variations on the now traditional themes and genres. The so-called 'Silver' Age of Latin literature has tended to be characterized in terms of dismissive or question- begging stereotypes - 'decadent', 'rhetorical', 'baroque', 'mannerist' - as a substitute for close critical argument. From the (...) sympathetic but searching appraisals in this volume the best writers of the age - Lucan, Seneca, Statius, Juvenal, Tacitus - emerge as men having something important to say and not merely technicians preoccupied with the most extravagant or paradoxical way of saying it. Complementary to these central figures as giving the age its special character and atmosphere are the minor poets, the satirists, the scholars and rhetoricians, the lesser historians, epistolographers and technical writers, whose varied activity provides the background to the main developments. The whole offers a detailed portrait of the literary interests of an age that was of necessity becoming increasingly more conscious of the past and of the problems of coping with its cultural heritage. (shrink)

The sixty years between 43 BC, when Cicero was assassinated, and AD 17, when Ovid died in exile and disgrace, saw an unexampled explosion of literary creativity in Rome. Fresh ground was broken in almost every existing genre, and a new kind of specifically Roman poetry, the personal love-elegy, was born, flourished, and succumbed to its own success. Latin literature now became, in the familiar modern sense of the word, classical: a balanced fusion of what was best and (...) most stimulating in earlier Greek and Roman writing, charged with new and original life by the individual genius of, most particularly, Virgil, Horace and Ovid. Augustan literature, conventionally viewed as the expression in writing of the age itself - political and social stability reflected in artistic equilibrium - turns out on a close and critical reading to have been subject to the same stresses and strains as the society in and for which it was produced. In appraising the monumental literary achievements of the age the underlying tensions and contradictions are not ignored. The critical discussions in this volume do full justice to the complexity and subtlety of the literature itself. (shrink)

In the third century BC Rome embarked on the expansion which was ultimately to leave her mistress of the Mediterranean world. As part of that expansion a national literature arose, springing from the union of native linguistic energy with Greek literary forms. Shortly after the middle of the century the first Latin play took the stage; by 100 BC most of the important genres invented by the Greeks - epic, tragedy, comedy, historiography, oratory - were solidly established in (...) their adoptive Roman forms, and a new genre, satire, had been born. The chapters in this volume describe and analyse the process of creative adaptation which shaped the beginnings of Latin literature and laid the foundations for its future development as one of the great literatures of the world. Essential background is provided by introductory chapters on readers and critics in the Roman world. In these are described the form of the books themselves and the conditions under which they were produced, circulated and read. The whole volume offers an indispensable introduction to the understanding of the nature and quality of Latin literature. (shrink)

Pandey, V. Introduction.--Kalelkar, K. S. Jainism, a familyhood of all religions.--David, M. D. From Risabha to Mahavira.--Chalil, J. E. Glimpses of Southern Jainism.--Gopani, A. S. Life and culture in Jaina narrative literature, 8th, 9th and 10th century A.D.--Gopani, A. S. Position of women in Jaina literature.--Ranka, R. Evolution of Jaina thought.--Pandey, V. Jaina philosophy and religion.--Shah, C. C. Jainism and modern life.--Sankalia, H. D. The great renunciation.--Shah, U. P. Jaina contribution to Indian art.--Gorakshkar, S. Early metal images of (...) the Jainas.--Bhagwati, U. Bibliographical aids for the study of Jainism. (shrink)

This book traces the theory of violence from nineteenth-century symmetrical warfare through today's warfare of electronics and unbalanced numbers. Surveying such luminaries as Walter Benjamin, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Paul Virilio, and Jacques Derrida, Avelar also offers a discussion of theories of torture and confession, the work of Roman Polanski and Borges, and a meditation on the rise of the novel in Colombia.

Lucretius' account of the origin of life, the origin of species, and human prehistory is the longest and most detailed account extant from the ancient world. It is a mechanistic theory that does away with the need for any divine design, and has been seen as a forerunner of Darwin's theory of evolution. This commentary seeks to locate Lucretius in both the ancient and modern contexts. The recent revival of creationism makes this study particularly relevant to contemporary debate, and indeed, (...) many of the central questions posed by creationists are those Lucretius attempts to answer. (shrink)

The contributions in this volume analyze different moments of intercultural negotiation within the history of Latin literature and look into the dynamic process of appropriation that guarantees its continuity.

The Cambridge History of Classical Literature provides a comprehensive, critical survey of the literature of Greece and Rome from Homer till the Fall of Rome. This is the only modern work of this scope; it embodies the very considerable advances made by recent classical scholarship, and reflects too the increasing sophistication and vigour of critical work on ancient literature. The literature is presented throughout in the context of the culture and the social and hisotircal processes (...) of which it is an integral part. The overall aim is to offer an authoritative work of reference and appraisal for one of the world's greatest continuous literary traditions. The work is divided into two volumes, each with a similar and broadly chronological structure. Among the special features are important introductory chapters by the General Editors on 'Books and Readers', discussing the conditions under which literature was written and read in antiquity. There are also extensive Appendices or Authors and Works giving detailed factual information in a convenient form. Technical annotation is otherwise kept to a minimum, and all quotations in foreign languages are translated. (shrink)

Lucretius' account of the origin of life, the origin of species, and human prehistory (first century BC) is the longest and most detailed account extant from the ancient world. It is a mechanistic theory that does away with the need for any divine design, and has been seen as a forerunner of Darwin's theory of evolution. This commentary seeks to locate Lucretius in both the ancient and modern contexts. The recent revival of creationism makes this study particularly relevant to contemporary (...) debate, and indeed, many of the central questions posed by creationists are those Lucretius attempts to answer. (shrink)

Proponemos analizar el alcance de las nociones roigeanas de "teoría y crítica" como categorías epistemológicas para un humanismo crítico latinoamericano desde una lectura alternativa de Teoría y crítica del pensamiento latinoamericano. Indagamos de qué forma estas categorías involucran la legitimidad del discurso filosófico, decisiones en torno del problema del sujeto y de la verdad y modos de entender la historia. Mostramos cómo Roig opera una ruptura, en el marco de lo que él denomina una ampliación metodológica en el campo del (...) quehacer filosófico, al imbricar conceptualizaciones epistemológicas con ejercicios reflexivos en los que el filosofar explora la experiencia vital, construye sus propias fuentes y se abre a una dimensión axiológica. En el marco de este desarrollo, Roig revisa el "legado", incorpora otras voces e interviene críticamente la estructura axiológica de los discursos y analiza sus formas de reconocimiento. Buscamos mostrar las herramientas teóricas y críticas que ofrece este libro en particular para discutir las condiciones y posibilidades del saber filosófico como saber práctico social, situado y liberador y los términos de los humanismos que supone o interpela. We propose to analyze the scope of Roig´s notions, "theory and criticism", as epistemological categories to reach a critical humanism of Latin America, based on the book Teoría y crítica del pensamiento latinoamericano, as an alternative reading. We evaluate how these categories involve the legitimacy of philosophical discourse, and the decisions taken on the subject´s problem, the truth and the possible ways to understand history. We also show how Roig, in the framework of what he identifies as methodological amplification within the field of philosophy´s task, fixes a rupture when interweaving epistemological concepts with reflective exercises in which the art of philosophy explores the vital experience, builds and rebuilds its own sources and opens up to an axiological dimension. In this framework, Roig revises the "legacy", adds other voices, handles critically the axiological structure of discourses and analyzes its ways of recognition. We aim to present the theoretical and critical tools of this book, especially to discuss the conditions and possibilities of the philosophical knowledge taken as practical, social, established and as liberator; and to discuss the terms of humanisms that the philosophical knowledge presents or interpellates. (shrink)

This authoritative volume offers a handy compilation of contributions to the field by its leading figures.