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In this paper I aim to reintroduce the poetry of Joanne Kyger, a contemporary and intimate of the Beat poets, whose first volume of poetry, The Tapestry and the Web, re-reads classical mythology as a female-centered nontraditional narrative. Kyger eschews traditional definitions of 'epic' in favor of a poetics that allows for the inscription of the female poet as a 'maker' or artisan, who crafts a text like a tapestry, crossing and re-crossing the page in an effort to create an open space for the work of reading. Kyger deliberately employs a mythic cycle to break through limits that constrict one's ability to place oneself in the poetry, either as poet or reader. The use of myth prevents her poetry from becoming personal or confessional, yet, it is a female-centered 'epic,' a category that in and of itself breaks down conventional poetic barriers. Thus, Kyger's poetry transforms the Odyssey into a multi-vocal, transgressive narrative, which de-centers and destabilizes the epic masculine narrating 'I.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the Renaissance poet and scholar Angelo Poliziano draws on Ovid's Tris-tia, Ibis, and Epistulae ex Ponto to shape his own experiences as a "poet of exile" during a six-month period of self-imposed absence from Florence in 1479-80. In four Latin epigrams, the Sylva in scabiem, and a lengthy letter of apology from the Gonzaga court in Mantua Poliziano appeals to his patron, Lorenzo de' Medici, to call him back to Florence. Poliziano's appeals to Lorenzo invoke Ovid's appeals from exile to the Roman emperor Augustus, who becomes in turn a model for a Renaissance ruler well aware of the importance of historical precedent. In appealing thus to his patron to have himself restored to Florence, Poliziano also lays claim to a powerful poetical exemplum in the figure of Ovid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a brief critique, in a first part (pp. 507-510), of previous scholars' biographical approach to the politics of translating Virgil, this paper proceeds to offer an alternative approach by looking at the "linguistic ideology" underpinning translations (especially of the Aeneid) (parts II and III [pp. 510-512 and 512-517]). What emerges is a contradictory tension between the idea of a single, unifying national vernacular and competing varieties or kinds of English. Inherent to this tension is the question of whose English (and consequently who) was to be included in the constituency of the "our" in "our English tongue"-a recurring phrase in translators' comments on their work. In a fourth and final part (pp. 517-527), these linguistic--and political--stakes are shown to have accrued around a critique, by George Puttenham in The Arte of English Poesie (1589), of Richard Stanyhurst's translation of the opening lines of the Aeneid. Specifically, this critique is taken up in the following decade (the 1590s), and the politics of its hierarchical and exclusive linguistic ideology opposed, on the one hand, by Richard Carew, in an important essay on the English language, and, on the other, by William Shakespeare, in two of his early plays, most importantly, The Merry Wives of Windsor, a play unique in the Shakespearean canon for its focus on "our English tongue," a focus which is here precisely placed in its intertextual relation to contemporary debate surrounding Richard Stanyhurst's translation of Virgil's Aeneid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on deeming beauty and the arts capable of protecting the individual from the encroachment of a totalitarian ideology. Topics include utilitarian way as powerful expressions of heroism and patriotism using to inspire the Chinese people; and focusing on the notions of rhythm, foot, measure and rhyme, and offering diverse prescriptions for the ‘ideal' poetic pattern of ‘new poetry.'

In the article, the author discusses the difference in the writing styles of authors Persius and Virgil. Other topics include Julius Caesar Scaliger's opinion on the differences as cited in his work "Poetices libri septem," how Virgil's superior artistic judgement elevated the art of poetry, and how Persius' programmatic satire showed the relationship between poetic style and morality.

The article focuses on the emphasize of poet Dante's Lucan on an opposition between Lucan and Virgil's the Divine Comedy. It mentions about the contrast between Roman Republican and Imperial values and also highlights a strongly biographical conception of the ancient epic canon that highlights the most controversial aspects of Lucan's life and the concept of his poetic rivalry with Virgil.

The article focuses on the poet Vladimir Nabokov's interest in the Russian dactylic hexameter and elegiac distich along with his classical imitations in Early Poetry. It mentions the thematic focus of the poem of the ekphrastic poems from the Greek Anthology that describe the statues of athletes; and also highlights the challenges to modernizing tendency in the poem along with the interest of Nabokov's towards anthological poetry and the hexameter.

The article offers information on the exegetical trends featured in the commentary edition of Virgil's poem "Aeneid" by Jacques Delille. The author mentions that the poem's commented edition successfully unites Delille's interpretive endeavour with his ambition in providing a paradigm to future poets and readers. He states that the commentary edition was considered as a subtle political reading of the poem that was situated in the early Napoleonic age.

The article offers information on the poem "De invento Novo Orbe inductoque illuc Christi sacrificio" by José Manuel Peramás. The author tries to explain the series of remarks about Peramás's religious poetry which was a feature of the bibliographical tradition. The author examines the poem's place in the Columbus canon.

This essay is an examination of the early translation history of Batrachomyomachia, a miniature epic poem of just 300 lines often transmitted with the Homeric corpus, into English. The earliest five translations are those of William Fowldes (1603), George Chapman (1624), Samuel Parker (1700), Thomas Parnell (1717) and Samuel Wesley (1726). My study of the reception of this poem in its earliest English translations reveals that it is recruited into a range of moral, political and literary causes. I first examine the tactics adopted by the earliest translators to deal with the special challenges posed by the poem and then I show that the battlefield within the poem translates into a battlefield about translation that is conducted in and through the translations of the poem. In particular, I show how Batrachomyomachia is harnessed to defend and enhance the status of Dryden and Pope as translators of the major Greco-Roman epics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poems—until lately ignored—of the Virgilian scholar James Henry enter into imaginative relation with many classical authors. So it is odd, given Henry’s dedication to the study of the Aeneid, that Virgil seems at first not to figure nearly so prominently as other authors (for instance, those in the satirical tradition, with whom Henry frequently and clearly signals his affinities). But reading Henry’s poems against his Virgilian commentary, the Aeneidea , reveals hidden links, and indicates that the Virgilian presence in Henry’s poems is both more pervasive and subtle than it seems. It is mediated by Henry’s scholarly prose, which in its themes, tone, energy and verbal nuances is strongly continuous with Henry’s poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bentley’s commentary on Milton’s Paradise Lost is an extraordinary work, which has attracted a wide range of verdicts from the critical community, mostly negative. Recent critics have tended to be more lenient towards Bentley than his contemporaries were, and it has been suggested that it was precisely the fact that Bentley was really a classicist that prevented him from dealing justly with Milton’s text. I argue, with examples, that this is a mistake: Bentley misunderstands a large number of Miltonic passages where the poet is deploying regular classical figures and techniques that Bentley ought to have recognized as such. I discuss some manuscript notes on Paradise Lost by Benjamin Stillingfleet which are relevant in this connection, and conclude with a more substantial illustration of Bentley’s misunderstanding of Milton’s classicism: a rhetorical figure much exploited by Horace appears in several places in Paradise Lost, but Bentley misses its presence both in Horace and in Milton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the influence of the ancient world and its literature on the poetry of Stevie Smith (1902-1971). I examine the three ways in which Smith incorporates classical elements in her poetical work: 1) the use of Latin phrases and antique settings, 2) adaptations of Greek mythology and 3) translations of classical Latin texts. Through an attentive reading of representative poems, I discuss her non-conformistic way of dealing with the classics and show how genuine admiration and clever use of the classics hide under the cover of her playful tone and apparent artlessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians of Latin literature of late antiquity agree that besides a more stable economy and political environment, the fourth and early fifth centuries saw a renaissance of Latin literature. Yet given this apparent consensus, poetry in this period lacked its traditional cultural authority; that is, poetry's ability to be intellectually and culturally relevant had been significantly curtailed. Patristic prose (Lactantius, Ambrose, Augustine) played a decisive role in determining what kind of poetry was permissible in the Roman Christian empire of the fourth century and influenced poetry's status in subsequent centuries. Although the major poets (Juvencus, Proba, Ambrose, Ausonius, Paulinus of Nola, Prudentius, and Claudian) have received well-deserved scholarly attention, their work reflects poetry's marginalized cultural status. The notion of a fourth-century revival for poetry should be scrutinized according to criteria that takes into account the subsidiary role of poetry within the church-dominated society of the age, and according to its reception in the Christian and secular literary histories that have since followed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A list of publications received is presented. The list includes "Agamemnon in Performance 458 BC to AD 2004," edited by Fiona Macintosh, Pantelis Michelakis, and Edith Hall, "Agonistes: Essays in Honour of Dennis O'Brien," edited by John Dillon and Monique Dixsaut, and "Gendered Dynamics and Latin Love Poetry," edited by Ronnie Ancona and Ellen Greene.

Aristotle's Poetics was virtually unknown in the West before the publication of the editio princeps of the Greek text in 1508. After this date its fame grew steadily. In the decades that followed it was repeatedly translated and commented upon; it also began to be used in theoretical treatises on the art of poetry in general. This article focuses on the most comprehensive of these treatises to appear in the sixteenth century, Julius Caesar Scaliger's Poetices libri septem (1561). It analyzes the claim, repeated countless times throughout the centuries, that the Poetices libri septem are an 'Aristotelian' treatise and tries to show that this claim is borne out neither by such references to the Aristotelian corpus as can be identified in Scaliger's work, nor by its internal structure and economy, nor indeed by its most important doctrinal tenets, such as the definition and purpose of poetry, the relationship of poetry to rhetoric and historiography, or the concept of mimesis. Despite Scaliger's paying lip-service to Aristotle his Poetices libri septem cannot thus be adequately interpreted and understood with exclusive reference to an Aristotelian framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]