Weighs the relationship of traditional and the present. Sees our world today as being like the transitional worlds of Homer, Virgil, and Apuleius and uses the two classical texts, the Metamorphoses and the Iliad as the basis of the discussion.

Before the world knew of the thinker who “philosophizes with a hammer,” there was a young, passionate thinker who was captivated by the two forces found within Greek art: Dionysus and Apollo. In this essay, which was the forerunner to his groundbreaking book The Birth of Tragedy, The Dionysian Vision of the World provides an unparalleled look into the philosophical mind of one of Europe’s greatest and provocative intellects at the beginning of his philosophical interrogation on the subject of art. “While dreaming is the game man plays with reality as an individual, the visual artist (in the larger sense) plays a game with dreaming.” This is the Dionysian vision of the world.

Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is probably best known as the literary source for the myth of Eros and Psyche and as a primary source of information about mystery religions in the ancient world. There is another realm of the Metamorphoses which has, until now, received relatively little attention — namely, the many dreams found within it. The Religious Dreamworld of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses offers an engaging portrait of the second-century dreamworld. Recognizing the centrality of the religious function and spiritual interpretation of dreams, this book illustrates their vital importance in the ancient world and the wide variety of meanings attributed to them. James Gollnick draws deeply from historical and psychological studies and provides a historical background on the current interest in the role of dreams in psychological and spiritual transformation. This study of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses adds to an appreciation of Apuleius the dreamer and the second-century dreamworld in which he lived and wrote.

Contributions by Georgiana Banita, Colin Beineke, Harriet Earle, Ariela Freedman, Liza Futerman, Shawn Gilmore, Sarah Hamblin, Cara Koehler, Lee Konstantinou, Patrick Lawrence, Philip Smith, and Kent Worcester A carefully curated, wide-ranging edited volume tracing Art Spiegelman’s exceptional trajectory from underground rebellion to mainstream success, Artful Breakdowns: The Comics of Art Spiegelman reveals his key role in the rise of comics as an art form and of the cartoonist as artist. The collection grapples with Spiegelman’s astonishing versatility, from his irreverent underground strips, influential avant-garde magazine RAW, the expressionist style of the comics classic Maus, the illustrations to the Jazz Age poem “The Wild Party,” and his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks to his iconic cover art for the New Yorker, his children’s books, and various cross-media collaborations. The twelve chapters cut across Spiegelman’s career to document continuities and ruptures that the intense focus on Maus has obscured, yielding an array of original readings. Spiegelman’s predilection for collage, improvisation, and the potent protest of silence shows his allegiance to modernist art. His cultural critique and anticapitalist, antimilitary positions shed light on his vocal public persona, while his deft intertextual strategies of mixing media archives, from comics to photography and film, amplify the poignance of his works. Developing new approaches to Spiegelman’s comics—such as the publication history of Maus, the history of immigration and xenophobia, and the cartoonist’s elevation of children’s comics—the collection leaves no doubt that despite the accolades his accessible comics have garnered, we have yet to grasp the full range of Spiegelman’s achievements in the realm of comics and beyond.

Students reading the Iliad for the first time are often bewildered by the sheer volume of information on apparently unrelated subjects contained in it. The central narrative seems to unfold very slowly, and to be complicated by long speeches containing stories which might be interesting in themselves, but which seem to have no relevance to anything else. In this book Dr Alden offers advice on how to read the Iliad through the relationship of major paradigms to the events of the main narrative. The first section offers the first full-length study in English of the paradigmatic functions of secondary narratives and minor-key episodes in the Iliad. None of these are irrelevant or merely ornamental: rather each is carefully selected and altered if necessary, to reflect on significant episodes of the main narrative and act as guides to its interpretation. The second section offers a general reading of the Iliad arising out of Phoenix's advice to Achilles in Book 9. The allegory of the Prayers illustrates the dire consequences of rejecting prayers, and the paradigm of Meleager presents us with an instance of an angry hero to whom prayers and entreaties are addressed, whilst the primary narrative confines this motif of prayers and entreaties in ascending scale of affection to Achilles and Hector and contrasts their responses. Both heroes suffer terribly for their rejection of entreaties.

One of the most notable achievements of ancient prose fiction, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius continues to intrigue readers. This study focuses on Apuleius' best-known work, but takes varied approaches to «metamorphosis, » exploring its use not only as a theme but as a literary technique. It breaks new ground by clearly demonstrating the close relationship between the Metamorphoses of Apuleius and the Metamorphoses of Ovid. It shows, too, the crucial significance of Isis for understanding Apuleius' mode of composition. Juxtaposing Apuleius' Metamorphoses with several works of modern literature, it also examines some of the transformations which the metamorphosis theme itself has undergone.

This book argues that The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche's first book, does not mark a rupture with his prior philosophical undertakings but is, in fact, continuous with them and with his later writings as well. It shows that many of the book's elements are reminiscent of Nietzsche's earlier revisions of philology and anticipate the later writings.

This book recovers Dionysus and Apollo as the twin conceptual personae of life’s dual rhythm in an attempt to redesign contemporary theory through the reciprocal but differential affirmation of event and form, body and thought, dance and philosophy.

This work is the first history and evaluation of contemporary American critical theory within its European philosophical contexts. In the first part, Frank Lentricchia analyzes the impact on our critical thought of Frye, Stevens, Kermode, Sartre, Poulet, Heidegger, Sussure, Barthes, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, and Foucault, among other, less central figures. In a second part, Lentricchia turns to four exemplary theorists on the American scene—Murray Krieger, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Paul de Man, and Harold Bloom—and an analysis of their careers within the lineage established in part one. Lentricchia's critical intention is in evidence in his sustained attack on the more or less hidden formalist premises inherited from the New Critical fathers. Even in the name of historical consciousness, he contends, contemporary theorists have often cut literature off from social and temporal processes. By so doing he believes that they have deprived literature of its relevant values and turned the teaching of both literature and theory into a rarefied activity. All along the way, with the help of such diverse thinkers as Saussure, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Bloom, Lentricchia indicates a strategy by which future critical theorists may resist the mandarin attitudes of their fathers.