"The essays collected in this volume examine manifestations of our sublime cosmos in ancient literature and its reception. Individual themes include religious mystery; calendrical and cyclical thinking as ordering principles of human experience; divine birth and the manifold nature of divinity (both awesome and terrifying); contemplation of the sky and meteorological (ir)regularity; fears associated with overpowering natural and anthropogenic events; and the aspirations and limitations of human expression. In texts ranging from Homer to Keats, the volume's chapters apply diverse critical methods and approaches that engage with sublimity in various aesthetic, agential and metaphysical aspects"--

The essays collected in this volume examine manifestations of our sublime cosmos in ancient literature and its reception. Individual themes include religious mystery; calendrical and cyclical thinking as ordering principles of human experience; divine birth and the manifold nature of divinity (both awesome and terrifying); contemplation of the sky and meteorological (ir)regularity; fears associated with overpowering natural and anthropogenic events; and the aspirations and limitations of human expression. In texts ranging from Homer to Keats, the volume's chapters apply diverse critical methods and approaches that engage with sublimity in various aesthetic, agential and metaphysical aspects. The ancient texts – epic, dramatic, historiographic and lyric – treated here are rooted in a remote world where, within a framework of (perceived) celestial order, literature, myth and science still communicated profoundly, a tradition that continued in literary receptions of these ancient works. This volume honours the intellectual legacy of Thomas D. Worthen, a scholar whose expertise and insights cut across multiple disciplines, and who influenced and inspired students and colleagues at the University of Arizona, USA, for over three decades. Beyond clarifying temporally and culturally distant contemplations of the human universe, these essays aim to inform the continuing sense of wonder and horror at the sublime heights and depths of our ever-changing cosmos.

Current understandings of the sublime are focused by a single word ('sublimity') and by a single author ('Longinus'). The sublime is not a word: it is a concept and an experience, or rather a whole range of ideas, meanings and experiences that are embedded in conceptual and experiential patterns. Once we train our sights on these patterns a radically different prospect on the sublime in antiquity comes to light, one that touches everything from its range of expressions to its dates of emergence, evolution, role in the cultures of antiquity as a whole, and later reception. This book is the first to outline an alternative account of the sublime in Greek and Roman poetry, philosophy, and the sciences, in addition to rhetoric and literary criticism. It offers new readings of Longinus without privileging him, but instead situates him within a much larger context of reflection on the sublime in antiquity.

This is the 1907 second edition of W. Rhys Roberts' Longinus on the Sublime. The volume contains the Greek text edited after the Paris manuscript, an extensive introduction, and a thorough and accessible translation of the main text. Roberts' introduction is divided into two parts: the authorship of the Treatise, and its content and character. Roberts is careful to place On the Sublime in its critical context, challenging both the inscription and description of this classical text. The author is thought to be an unknown teacher, and not the historical Longinus, whilst the 'sublime' in this instance is not 'the sublime' as we would commonly understand it. On the Sublime is a text which dissects the problems of literary criticism and the aesthetics of Greek literature. The lively and intelligent style of the text will ensure that Roberts' edition is enjoyed by Greek scholars and general readers alike.

Treatise commonly attributed to Longinus but probably the work of an unknown writer of the 1st century A.D.

On the Sublime is a Greek work of literary criticism dated to the 1st century AD. The authorship of this book is officially unknown, but some scholars believe it was created by Longinus or Pseudo-Longinus. The work is regarded as a classic work on aesthetics and the effects of good writing.

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni Theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions – analogism, pantheism, and naturalism – found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice.