Brill’s Companion to Classics in the Early Americas opens a window onto classical receptions across the Hispanophone, Lusophone, Francophone and Anglophone Americas during the early modern period, examining classical reception as a phenomenon in transhemispheric perspective for the first

This volume examines the long and complex history of the Greco-Roman tradition in South America, arguing that the Classics have played a crucial, though often overlooked, role in the self-definition in the New World. Chronicling and theorizing this history through a detailed analysis of five key moments, chosen from the early and late colonial period, the emancipatory era, and the 20th and 21st centuries, it also examines an eclectic selection of both literary and cinematographic works and artefacts such as maps, letters, scientific treatises, songs, monuments, political speeches, and even the drafts of proposals for curricular changes across Latin America. The heterogeneous cases analysed in this book reveal cultural anxieties that recur through different periods, fundamentally related to the 'newness' of the continent and the formation of identities imagined as both Western and non-Western – a genealogy of apprehensions that South American intellectuals and political figures have typically experienced when thinking of their own role in world history. In tracing this genealogy, The Classics in South America innovatively reformulates our understanding of well-known episodes in the cultural history of the region, while providing a theoretical and historical resource for further studies of the importance of the Classical tradition across Latin America.

The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art history, religious studies, history, classics, and cultural and media studies. The companion will offer scholars and graduate students the first comprehensive and authoritative review of this emergent field.

Though much has been written about connections between early modern utopia and nascent European imperialism, the author brings a fresh perspective to the topic by exploring it through some of the sub-genres that comprise early modern utopia, identifying and discussing each specific form in the cultural and historical contexts that render it suitable for the creation and promulgation of utopian programs, whether imaginary or intended for actual implementation. This study transforms scholarly understanding of early modern utopia by first complicating our notion of it as a single genre, and secondly by fusing our paradoxically fragmented view of it as alternately a literary or social phenomenon. Her analysis shows early modern utopia to be not a single genre, but rather a conglomeration of many forms or sub-genres, including travel writing, ethnography, dialogue, pastoral, and the sermon, each with its own relationship to nascent imperialism. These sub-genres bring to utopian writing a variety of discourses - anthropological, theological, philosophical, legal, and more - not usually considered fictional; presented in a humanist guise, these discourses lend to early modern utopia an authority that serves to counteract the general contemporary distrust of fiction. The author shows how early modern utopia, in conjunction with the authoritative forms of its sub-genres, is not only able to impose its fictions upon the material world but in doing so contributes to the imperialistic agendas of its day. This volume contains a bibliographical essay as well as a chronology of utopian publications and projects, in Europe and the New World.

According to one narrative, that received almost canonical status a century ago with Francis Haverfield, the orthogonal grid was the most important development of ancient town planning, embodying values of civilization in contrast to barbarism, diffused in particular by hundreds of Roman colonial foundations, and its main legacy to subsequent urban development was the model of the grid city, spread across the New World in new colonial cities. This book explores the shortcomings of that all too colonialist narrative and offers new perspectives. It explores the ideals articulated both by ancient city founders and their modern successors; it looks at new evidence for Roman colonial foundations to reassess their aims; and it looks at the many ways post-Roman urbanism looked back to the Roman model with a constant re-appropriation of the idea of the Roman.

This collection of eleven essays furthers the dialogue between early modern history and the social sciences through an analysis of Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World of Philip II. The contributors review various historiographical traditions to arrive at conclusions on contemporary theory and practice in the exchange between history and the disciplines of geography, economics, sociology, anthropology, politics (diplomatic history and the study of revolutions), psychology (law), religion, and area studies (China and the Americas). Contributors Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge Jan de Vries, University of California, Berkeley Mark Elvin, Australian National University, Canberra Jack A. Goldstone, University of California, Davis Antonio Manuel Hespanha, Universidade Nova de Lisboa Henry Kamen, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Institució Milà i Fontanals, Barcelona John A. Marino, University of California, San Diego Ottavia Niccoli, Università degli Studi di Trento Anthony Pagden, University of California, Los Angeles M. J. Rodríguez-Salgado, London School of Economics Bartolomé Yun Casalilla, Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla