scholarly journals Shakespeare, the Ekphrastic Translator

Linguaculture ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-97
Author(s):  
Pia Brînzeu

Abstract In The Rape of Lucrece, the Shakespearean heroine admires a wall-painting illustrating a scene from the Trojan War. The two hundred lines of the poem in which Lucrece describes the ancient characters involved in the war represent a remarkable piece of ekphrastic transposition. It produces a vivid effect in the poem’s narrative, draws attention to the power of ekphrasis in guiding the reader’s interpretation, and represents an unrivalled example of embedded ekphrasis, unique in Renaissance poetry.

Author(s):  
David Quint
Keyword(s):  

This chapter focuses on book 2 of Paradise Lost. In book 2, Milton continues the story of the demilitarization of the fallen angels and of his epic more generally when he bases all of its action around the figure of Ulysses, the hero of eloquence and fraud, whose own epic comes in the aftermath of the Trojan War. The chapter demonstrates that the Odyssey, imitated and parodied in Satan's voyage through Chaos to God's newly created universe in the book's last section, is just one of the classical stories about the career of Ulysses that Milton evokes as models for its different episodes. The various parts of book 2 are held together by this pattern of allusion, as well as by the Odyssean figures of Scylla and Charybdis, the emblem of bad choices, or of loss of choice itself.


2020 ◽  
pp. 173-195
Author(s):  
Tomasz Waliszewski ◽  
Julia Burdajewicz

Porphyreon (Jiyeh/Nebi Younis) and Chhim were large rural settlements situated on the coast of modernday Lebanon, north of the Phoenician city of Sidon. As attested by the remains of residential architecture, they were thriving during the Roman Period and late Antiquity (1st–7th centuries AD). This article presents the preliminary observations on the domestic architecture uncovered at both sites, their spatial and social structure, as well as their furnishing and decoration, based on the fieldwork carried out in recent years by the joint PolishLebanese research team. The focus will be put on the wall painting fragments found in considerable numbers in Porphyreon. The iconographical and functional study of the paintings betrays to what extent the inhabitants of rural settlements in the coastal zone of the Levant were inclined to imitate the decoration of the urban houses known to them from the nearby towns, such as Berytus, but also from religious contexts represented by churches.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 394-396
Author(s):  
Raymond J. Cormier

In his Roman de Brut (1155), the Norman Robert Wace of Caen recounts the founding of Britain by Brutus of Troy to the end of legendary British history, while adapting freely the History of the Kings of Britain (1136) by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Wace’s Brut inaugurated a new genre, at least in part, commonly known as the “romances of antiquity” (romans d'antiquité). The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, dating to around 1165, is, along with the Roman de Thèbes and the Roman d’Énéas, one of the three such romances dealing with themes from antiquity. These creations initiated the subjects, plots and structures of the genre, which subsequently flowered under authors such as Chrétien de Troyes. As an account of the Trojan War, Benoît’s version of necessity deals with war and its causes, how it was fought and what its ultimate consequences were for the combatants. How to explain its success? The author chose the standard and successful poetic form of the era—octosyllabic rhyming couplets; he was fond of extended descriptions; he could easily recount the intensity of personal struggles; and, above all he was fascinated by the trials and tribulations of love, a passion that affects several prominent warriors (among them Paris and his love for Helen, and Troilus and his affection for Briseida). All these elements combined to contour this romance in which events from the High Middle Ages were presented as a likeness of the poet’s own feudal and courtly spheres. This long-awaited new translation, the first into English, is accompanied by an extensive introduction and six-page outline of the work; two appendices (on common words, and a list of known Troie manuscripts); nearly twenty pages of bibliography; plus exhaustive indices of personal and geographical names and notes. As the two senior scholars assert (p. 3), By translating Benoît’s entire poem we seek to contribute to a greater appreciation of its composition and subject-matter, and thus to make available to a modern audience what medieval readers and audiences knew and appreciated.


Author(s):  
Simon Hornblower
Keyword(s):  

Rhodes in Lykophron is a puzzle. The poet believes that Rhodians from the east Aegean tried to settle in the Croton region of south Italy after the Trojan war, and implies that they failed. But there is little or no evidence from archaeology, inscriptions or coins for a Rhodian presence in Italy as opposed to Sicily. An explanation is offered for this anomalous tradition. The Romans did successfully colonize Croton in 194 BC, at a time when they were friends of the Rhodians. They were symbolically retrieving a mythical Rhodian failure.


Minerals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 839
Author(s):  
Lucilla Pronti ◽  
Giuseppe Capobianco ◽  
Margherita Vendittelli ◽  
Anna Candida Felici ◽  
Silvia Serranti ◽  
...  

Multispectral imaging is a preliminary screening technique for the study of paintings. Although it permits the identification of several mineral pigments by their spectral behavior, it is considered less performing concerning hyperspectral imaging, since a limited number of wavelengths are selected. In this work, we propose an optimized method to map the distribution of the mineral pigments used by Vincenzo Pasqualoni for his wall painting placed at the Basilica of S. Nicola in Carcere in Rome, combining UV/VIS/NIR reflectance spectroscopy and multispectral imaging. The first method (UV/VIS/NIR reflectance spectroscopy) allowed us to characterize pigment layers with a high spectral resolution; the second method (UV/VIS/NIR multispectral imaging) permitted the evaluation of the pigment distribution by utilizing a restricted number of wavelengths. Combining the results obtained from both devices was possible to obtain a distribution map of a pictorial layer with a high accuracy level of pigment recognition. The method involved the joint use of point-by-point hyperspectral spectroscopy and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify the pigments in the color palette and evaluate the possibility to discriminate all the pigments recognized, using a minor number of wavelengths acquired through the multispectral imaging system. Finally, the distribution and the spectral difference of the different pigments recognized in the multispectral images, (in this case: red ochre, yellow ochre, orpiment, cobalt blue-based pigments, ultramarine and chrome green) were shown through PCA false-color images.


Author(s):  
Camilla Caporicci

AbstractThe conceit of the beloved’s hair ensnaring and binding the poet’s heart and soul is common in Renaissance poetry and particularly widespread in the tradition of Petrarchan love lyric. The topos can be traced back to Petrarch’s canzoniere, or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, in which Laura’s golden hair is often described in terms of knots and laces tying both the poet’s heart and soul. No classical antecedent has previously been identified for the image. In this study, I propose a possible classical source for the characteristic Petrarchan motif of Laura’s binding hair knot: Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, a manuscript of which the poet owned and which he read and annotated several times. In particular, I show how passages such as Lucius’s celebration of the beauty of women’s hair (Metamorphoses, II.8–9), and especially his declaration of love to Photis, an oath he takes on ʻthat sweet knot of your hair with which you have bound my spiritʼ (ibid., III.23), can be convincingly regarded as a source for Petrarch’s conceit. In addition to the value inherent in the detection of a new source for an influential Petrarchan topos, the present study may have some further implications. It could offer novel arguments for the dating of a series of Petrarchan poems, and it could foster a potentially fruitful reappraisal of the influence of Apuleius’s work on Petrarch’s vernacular poetry.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document