Coleridge: Biblical and Classical Literature

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony John Harding
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Thursday Evening ◽  
Table Talk

This article examines the influence of biblical and classical literature on the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It discusses Coleridge's lifelong immersion in biblical and classical literature, and mentions that Table Talk gives some indication of how frequently and eagerly Coleridge spoke about biblical and classical literature at his Thursday-evening soirées. The article evaluates Coleridge's influence on his younger contemporaries, especially as it relates to how the ancient world was understood and interpreted.

The Construction of Humanism

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-68
Author(s):  
Floris Verhaart
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Correct Reading ◽  
George Buchanan ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter starts with a very concise discussion of how the different approaches to classical literature debated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be traced back to the ancient world and the Middle Ages. The rest of the chapter demonstrates how scholars in the early eighteenth century reflected on the work of their predecessors from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries based on their own scholarly concerns. The first example is Pieter Burman (1668–1741) and his Sylloge epistolarum (1724–7), the edition of unpublished writings by the French critic Henri Valois (1603–76; edition published in 1740), and the edition of George Buchanan (1506–82), published in 1725. In the Sylloge, for example, Burman focuses on letters that show how eminent scholars thought about the correct reading of classical texts, while a ‘popularizer’ like Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) is criticized. Valois’s work was used as a starting point to reflect on what Burman and his nephew Pieter Burman the Younger (1713–78) saw as the downfall of French textual criticism. Finally, Burman’s own interest in the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of texts also allowed him to avoid involvement in politically sensitive matters, as was the case for Buchanan’s views in contemporary Scotland. The final example discussed in this chapter is the prefatory material written by Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736) for the edition of Erasmus’ Opera omnia (1703–6), in which Le Clerc dwells on the relationship between the study of ancient literature and other academic disciplines such as philosophy and theology.

Tacitus' Conception of the Function of History

1936 ◽  
Vol 6 (16) ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
R. L. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual

There were various conceptions of the function of history current in the ancient world. There was always one school of so-called historians who wrote with the motive of giving pleasure uppermost in their minds. The absence of a novel from classical literature left romance to invade history and oratory, and writers of this school might often be more properly called historical novelists than historians. They were especially susceptible to the influence of declamation and the rhetorical worship of style. For this school, in brief, history was nothing but the raw material for the literary artist. A second school, of which Polybius is the most prominent representative, held that history should be the training-ground of politicians, statesmen, and soldiers, who may learn from the past how to discover the real significance of events. Polybius naturally attached more importance to truth (which, he says, is to history what the eye is to the human body) than did those who wrote only for entertainment. Thirdly, there was the view that it is the function of history to teach men of all stations the lessons of the past, and by so teaching form and strengthen the individual moral character. This last is the view of Tacitus, though his conception of the function of history is broad enough to embrace the other two in a properly subordinate measure.

Hartley Coleridge on His Father

PMLA ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 1246-1252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Earl Leslie Griggs
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
Table Talk

After the death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1834, while Hazlitt, DeQuincey, Cottle, and Allsop were publishing unwise and sometimes unfounded accounts of his life, Henry Nelson Coleridge, the poet's nephew and Sara Coleridge's husband, thought that some effort should be made to prepare an authentic biography. His additions to the Biographia Literaria and his Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge show how well he succeeded.

Coleridge as Talker: Sage of Highgate, Table Talk

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Vallins
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
Table Talk

This article examines the reputation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a talker and sage. It suggests that Coleridge's celebrity as a sage and conversationalist was at its height during his stay with the Gillmans in Highgate, England from 1816 onwards, and especially the period after 1829. The article discusses the distinctive opinions he expressed to his numerous visitors in this period based on Table Talk.

General

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-128
Author(s):  
Vedia Izzet ◽  
Robert Shorrock
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Open University ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Second Sophistic

Twelves Voices from Greece and Romeby Christopher Pelling and Maria Wyke sounds like a title specially commissioned by this very journal, though, alas, we can claim none of the credit! The collaboration arose out of a BBC Radio 3 series on classical literature in collaboration with the Open University and should have a broad appeal. Of the twelve voices six are Greek, six Latin: for the poets, Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Horace; for the tragedians, Euripides; for the historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Caesar, Tacitus; with Cicero for the orators (and philosophers…) and Juvenal for the satirists, paired with the final ‘voice’ in the collection: Lucian (a striking sign of the growing interest and marketability of Second Sophistic and Imperial Greek authors). This is a stimulating and enjoyable read, which carries one swiftly along. It is not a didactic regurgitation of literary and cultural history (though the final section on ‘Translations and Further Reading’ gives all the references one needs for further research) but a celebration of the continuing relevance of the Classics:The texts of the ancient world can still speak, not just to us, but with us, and in a range of exhilarating and disturbing ways. They still matter, and what they talk about can still be fresh (whether empire, masculinity, nature, urbanity, madness, rationality, religious commitment and disbelief, family and friendship, desire, or death). (x)

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