Random House New Releases - Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical

Grief Lessons by Anne Carson

2014-02-15T00:30:00-05:00

Grief Lessons Four Plays by Euripides
Written by Euripides
Translated by Anne Carson
Introduction by Anne Carson

eBook | NYRB Classics | Drama - Greek & Roman; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient, Classical & Medieval | $14.95 | 978-1-59017-557-6 (1-59017-557-3)

Euripides, the last of the three great tragedians of ancient Athens, reached the height of his renown during the disastrous Peloponnesian War, when democratic Athens was brought down by its own outsized ambitions. “Euripides,” the classicist Bernard Knox has written, —was born never to live in peace with himself and to prevent the rest of mankind from doing so.— His plays were shockers: he unmasked heroes, revealing them as foolish and savage, and he wrote about the powerless—women and children, slaves and barbarians—for whom tragedy was not so much exceptional as unending. Euripides’ plays rarely won first prize in the great democratic competitions of ancient Athens, but their combustible mixture of realism and extremism fascinated audiences throughout the Greek world. In the last days of the Peloponnesian War, Athenian prisoners held captive in far-off Sicily were said to have won their freedom by reciting snatches of Euripides’ latest tragedies.

Four of those tragedies are here presented in new translations by the contemporary poet and classicist Anne Carson. They are Herakles, in which the hero swaggers home to destroy his own family; Hekabe, set after the Trojan War, in which Hektor’s widow takes vengeance on her Greek captors; Hippolytos, about love and the horror of love; and the strange tragic-comedy fable Alkestis, which tells of a husband who arranges for his wife to die in his place. The volume also contains brief introductions by Carson to each of the plays along with two remarkable framing essays: “Tragedy: A Curious Art Form” and “Why I Wrote Two Plays About Phaidra.”

Waiting for the Barbarians by Daniel Mendelsohn

2012-10-16T00:30:00-05:00

Waiting for the Barbarians Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture
Written by Daniel Mendelsohn

eBook, 440 pages | New York Review Books | Literary Criticism & Collections; Literary Criticism & Collections - American; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical | $24.95 | 978-1-59017-609-2 (1-59017-609-X)

Over the past decade and a half, Daniel Mendelsohn’s reviews for The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review have earned him a reputation as “one of the greatest critics of our time” (Poets& Writers). In Waiting for the Barbarians, he brings together twenty-four of his recent essays—each one glinting with “verve and sparkle,” “acumen and passion”—on a wide range of subjects, from Avatar to the poems of Arthur Rimbaud, from our inexhaustible fascination with the Titanic to Susan Sontag’s Journals. Trained as a classicist, author of two internationally best-selling memoirs, Mendelsohn moves easily from penetrating considerations of the ways in which the classics continue to make themselves felt in contemporary life and letters (Greek myth in the Spider-Man musical, Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho) to trenchant takes on pop spectacles—none more explosively controversial than his dissection of Mad Men.

Also gathered here are essays devoted to the art of fiction, from Jonathan Littell’s Holocaust blockbuster The Kindly Ones to forgotten gems like the novels of Theodor Fontane. In a final section, “Private Lives,” prefaced by Mendelsohn’sNew Yorker essay on fake memoirs, he considers the lives and work of writers as disparate as Leo Lerman, Noël Coward, and Jonathan Franzen. Waiting for the Barbarians once again demonstrates that Mendelsohn’s “sweep as a cultural critic is as impressive as his depth.”

Waiting for the Barbarians by Daniel Mendelsohn

2012-10-16T00:30:00-05:00

Waiting for the Barbarians Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture
Written by Daniel Mendelsohn

Hardcover, 440 pages | New York Review Books | Literary Criticism & Collections; Literary Criticism & Collections - American; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical | $24.95 | 978-1-59017-607-8 (1-59017-607-3)

Atlantis by Arysio Santos

2011-03-01T00:30:00-05:00

Atlantis The Lost Continent Finally Found
Written by Arysio Santos

Trade Paperback, 368 pages | North Atlantic Books | Body, Mind & Spirit - Mythical Civilizations; Social Science - Archaeology; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical | $21.95 | 978-1-55643-956-8 (1-55643-956-3)

The late author Arysio Santos was a highly regarded climatologist, geologist, and nuclear physicist. He was also a scholar of history, folklore, languages, and the occult. In this groundbreaking study of Atlantis, he draws on all these disciplines, as well as ancient maps, Plato’s dialogues, and folkloric narratives, to provide the most compelling case yet of the disappearance of an entire civilization.

Professor Santos demonstrates that Plato’s dating of Atlantis’s disappearance in 11,600 BP (before present) precisely corresponds to the catastrophic end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, as well as a historic flood event of cataclysmic proportions. The rising of the sea level by nearly 500 feet, he argues, submerged continent-sized lands—including Atlantis, which he connects with the biblical Garden of Eden. Provocative chapters cover such topics as the continent’s appearance in ancient maps, Indonesia as the true site of Eden, American interpretations of Atlantis, the four rivers of paradise, and more, giving a clear form to the ghostly outline of this fabled land.

A Guide to The Odyssey by Ralph Hexter

2011-01-26T00:30:00-05:00

A Guide to The Odyssey A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald
Written by Ralph Hexter

eBook, 464 pages | Vintage | Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical | $13.99 | 978-0-307-76089-0 (0-307-76089-8)

For those of us who know and love the incomparable Odyssey of Homer (and there are many), Dr. Hexter has created a valuable, detailed analysis, taking into account many of Homer's most fascinating subtleties.

Literature and the Gods by Roberto Calasso

2010-06-16T00:30:00-05:00

Literature and the Gods
Written by Roberto Calasso

eBook, 224 pages | Vintage | Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical; Fiction - Folklore | $13.99 | 978-0-307-53773-7 (0-307-53773-0)

Brilliant, inspired, and gloriously erudite, Literature and the Gods is the culmination of Roberto Calasso’s lifelong study of the gods in the human imagination. By uncovering the divine whisper that lies behind the best poetry and prose from across the centuries, Calasso gives us a renewed sense of the mystery and enchantment of great literature.

From the banishment of the classical divinities during the Age of Reason to their emancipation by the Romantics and their place in the literature of our own time, the history of the gods can also be read as a ciphered and splendid history of literary inspiration. Rewriting that story, Calasso carves out a sacred space for literature where the presence of the gods is discernible. His inquiry into the nature of “absolute literature” transports us to the realms of Dionysus and Orpheus, Baudelaire and Mallarmé, and prompts a lucid and impassioned defense of poetic form, even when apparently severed from any social function. Lyrical and assured, Literature and the Gods is an intensely engaging work of literary affirmation that deserves to be read alongside the masterpieces it celebrates.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Travelling Heroes by Robin Lane Fox

2010-03-09T00:30:00-05:00

Travelling Heroes In the Epic Age of Homer
Written by Robin Lane Fox

Trade Paperback, 496 pages | Vintage | History - Ancient - Greece; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical | $21.95 | 978-0-679-76386-4 (0-679-76386-4)

The myths of the ancient Greeks have inspired us for thousands of years. Where did the famous stories of the battles of their gods develop and spread across the world? The celebrated classicist Robin Lane Fox draws on a lifetime’s knowledge of the ancient world, and on his own travels, answering this question by pursuing it through the age of Homer. His acclaimed history explores how the intrepid seafarers of eighth-century Greece sailed around the Mediterranean, encountering strange new sights—volcanic mountains, vaporous springs, huge prehistoric bones—and weaving them into the myths of gods, monsters and heroes that would become the cornerstone of Western civilization.

How to Read a Myth by William Marderness

2009-04-10T00:30:00-05:00

How to Read a Myth
Written by William Marderness

Hardcover, 152 pages | Humanity Books | Social Science - Folklore & Mythology; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical; Language Arts - Literacy | $26.99 | 978-1-59102-640-2 (1-59102-640-7)

Confusion surrounds the idea of myth. In common parlance, the term myth often means falsehood, as in the sentence The administration's claim that inflation is under control is a myth. Scholars understand myth in a deeper sense, as an important expression of a society's values. Scholars study myths of the past, such as ancient Greek and Roman myths, and myths of contemporary society, such as those embodied in sports, politics, and religion. Roland Barthes and Mircea Eliade pioneered two contrasting yet equally influential theories of myth.Until now, no one has successfully integrated Barthes' interpretation of myth as a system of signs and Eliade's interpretation of myth as a sacred narrative. In this important contribution to the study of myth, philosopher William Marderness proposes a comprehensive theory that accounts for the diverse interpretations of Barthes and Eliade, among others. Marderness articulates four ways of understanding myth: mythical reading (myth as truth), cultural reading (myth as cultural convention), extra mythical reading (myth as enigma), and mythological reading (myth as artifice). Through this interpretive framework, Marderness explicates portions of the Bible, Virgil's "Aeneid", Anchee Min's "Red Azalea", and Julia Alvarez's "In the Time of the Butterflies". Marderness shows us through diverse contexts how his comprehensive theory enriches our understanding of myth as cultural expression.

The Complete Poems of Sappho by Willis Barnstone

2009-03-10T00:30:00-05:00

The Complete Poems of Sappho
Edited by Willis Barnstone

Trade Paperback, 224 pages | Shambhala | Poetry - Ancient, Classical & Medieval; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical; Literary Criticism & Collections - Women Authors | $18.95 | 978-1-59030-613-0 (1-59030-613-9)

Sappho’s thrilling lyric verse has been unremittingly popular for more than 2,600 years—certainly a record for poetry of any kind—and love for her art only increases as time goes on. Though her extant work consists only of a collection of fragments and a handful of complete poems, her mystique endures to be discovered anew by each generation, and to inspire new efforts at bringing the spirit of her Greek words faithfully into English.

In the past, translators have taken two basic approaches to Sappho: either very literally translating only the words in the fragments, or taking the liberty of reconstructing the missing parts. Willis Barnstone has taken a middle course, in which he remains faithful to the words of the fragments, only very judiciously filling in a word or phrase in cases where the meaning is obvious. This edition includes extensive notes and a special section of “Testimonia”: appreciations of Sappho in the words of ancient writers from Plato to Plutarch. Also included are a glossary of all the figures mentioned in the poems, and suggestions for further reading. <iframe title="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rx7uvwrdCrE" width="640" frameborder="0" height="390"> </iframe>

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The Odyssey by Charles Stein

2008-10-07T00:30:00-05:00

The Odyssey
Written by Homer
Translated by Charles Stein

Trade Paperback, 656 pages | North Atlantic Books | Poetry - Ancient, Classical & Medieval; History - Ancient - Greece; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical | $22.95 | 978-1-55643-728-1 (1-55643-728-5)

Most translations of The Odyssey are in the kind of standard verse form believed typical of high-serious composition in the ancient world. Yet some scholars believe the epic was originally composed in a less formal, phrase-by-phrase prosody. Charles Stein employs the latter approach in this dramatic, and in some ways truer, version. Famous episodes such as the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the Cyclops, are rendered with previously unseen energy and empathy. The poem’s second half—where Odysseus, returned home to take revenge on his wife’s suitors—has extraordinarily subtle, “novelistic” features that are made more transparent in this version. There is also a special feel for the archaic dimensions of Homer—the world of gods and their complex relations to Fate and Being that other translators tend to deemphasize in order to make the poem feel “modern.” Most versions exclude or minimize the magical aspects of the poem, but Stein gives these elements full play, so that the spirit of a universe predating the classical era shines through. This vibrant version of The Odyssey shows readers not only what the Greeks thought about their gods but the gods themselves. Summaries preceding each chapter and a list of recommended websites help expand the experience.

Grief Lessons by Anne Carson

2008-09-16T00:30:00-05:00

Grief Lessons Four Plays by Euripides
Written by Euripides
Translated by Anne Carson
Introduction by Anne Carson

Trade Paperback, 312 pages | NYRB Classics | Drama - Greek & Roman; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical; Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient, Classical & Medieval | $14.95 | 978-1-59017-253-7 (1-59017-253-1)

Now in paperback.

Euripides, the last of the three great tragedians of ancient Athens, reached the height of his renown during the disastrous Peloponnesian War, when democratic Athens was brought down by its own outsized ambitions. “Euripides,” the classicist Bernard Knox has written, “was born never to live in peace with himself and to prevent the rest of mankind from doing so.” His plays were shockers: he unmasked heroes, revealing them as foolish and savage, and he wrote about the powerless–women and children, slaves and barbarians–for whom tragedy was not so much exceptional as unending. Euripides’ plays rarely won first prize in the great democratic competitions of ancient Athens, but their combustible mixture of realism and extremism fascinated audiences throughout the Greek world. In the last days of the Peloponnesian War, Athenian prisoners held captive in far-off Sicily were said to have won their freedom by reciting snatches of Euripides’ latest tragedies.

Four of those tragedies are presented here in new translations by the contemporary poet and classicist Anne Carson. They are Herakles, in which the hero swaggers home to destroy his own family; Hekabe, set after the Trojan War, in which Hektor’s widow takes vengeance on her Greek captors; Hippolytos, about love and the horror of love; and the strange tragic-comedy fable Alkestis, which tells of a husband who arranges for his wife to die in his place. The volume also contains brief introductions by Carson to each of the plays along with two remarkable framing essays: “Tragedy: A Curious Art Form” and “Why I Wrote Two Plays About Phaidra.”

Literature and the Gods by Roberto Calasso

2002-06-04T00:30:00-05:00

Literature and the Gods
Written by Roberto Calasso

Trade Paperback, 224 pages | Vintage | Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical; Fiction - Folklore | $16.00 | 978-0-375-72543-2 (0-375-72543-1)

Turning by Michael Naas

1995-06-01T00:30:00-05:00

Turning
Written by Michael Naas

Hardcover, 308 pages | Humanity Books | Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical | $65.99 | 978-1-57392-363-7 (1-57392-363-X)

A major desconstructive reading of Homer's Iliad by the well-known translator of Derrida and Lyotard.

A Guide to The Odyssey by Ralph Hexter

1993-11-30T00:30:00-05:00

A Guide to The Odyssey A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald
Written by Ralph Hexter

Trade Paperback, 464 pages | Vintage | Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical | $14.36 | 978-0-679-72847-4 (0-679-72847-3)

Random House New Releases - Literary Criticism & Collections - Ancient & Classical

Grief Lessons by Anne Carson

Grief Lessons Four Plays by EuripidesWritten by Euripides Translated by Anne Carson Introduction by Anne Carson

Waiting for the Barbarians by Daniel Mendelsohn

Waiting for the Barbarians Essays from the Classics to Pop CultureWritten by Daniel Mendelsohn

Waiting for the Barbarians by Daniel Mendelsohn

Waiting for the Barbarians Essays from the Classics to Pop CultureWritten by Daniel Mendelsohn

Atlantis by Arysio Santos

Atlantis The Lost Continent Finally FoundWritten by Arysio Santos

A Guide to The Odyssey by Ralph Hexter

A Guide to The Odyssey A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert FitzgeraldWritten by Ralph Hexter

Literature and the Gods by Roberto Calasso

Literature and the Gods Written by Roberto Calasso

Travelling Heroes by Robin Lane Fox

Travelling Heroes In the Epic Age of HomerWritten by Robin Lane Fox

How to Read a Myth by William Marderness

How to Read a Myth Written by William Marderness

The Complete Poems of Sappho by Willis Barnstone

The Complete Poems of Sappho Edited by Willis Barnstone

The Odyssey by Charles Stein

The Odyssey Written by Homer Translated by Charles Stein

Grief Lessons by Anne Carson

Grief Lessons Four Plays by EuripidesWritten by Euripides Translated by Anne Carson Introduction by Anne Carson

Literature and the Gods by Roberto Calasso

Literature and the Gods Written by Roberto Calasso

Turning by Michael Naas

Turning Written by Michael Naas

A Guide to The Odyssey by Ralph Hexter

A Guide to The Odyssey A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert FitzgeraldWritten by Ralph Hexter

Grief Lessons Four Plays by Euripides
Written by Euripides
Translated by Anne Carson
Introduction by Anne Carson

Waiting for the Barbarians Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture
Written by Daniel Mendelsohn

Waiting for the Barbarians Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture
Written by Daniel Mendelsohn

Atlantis The Lost Continent Finally Found
Written by Arysio Santos

A Guide to The Odyssey A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald
Written by Ralph Hexter

Literature and the Gods
Written by Roberto Calasso

Travelling Heroes In the Epic Age of Homer
Written by Robin Lane Fox

How to Read a Myth
Written by William Marderness

The Complete Poems of Sappho
Edited by Willis Barnstone

The Odyssey
Written by Homer
Translated by Charles Stein

Grief Lessons Four Plays by Euripides
Written by Euripides
Translated by Anne Carson
Introduction by Anne Carson

Literature and the Gods
Written by Roberto Calasso

Turning
Written by Michael Naas

A Guide to The Odyssey A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald
Written by Ralph Hexter