Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval

This monograph is a cultural history of the performance, reception and influence of the ancient Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. First produced in the late 5^th century BCE in Athens, this play was one of the most influential of all the canonical classical dramas in antiquity until the fourth century CE and in the period between the Renaissance and the early 20^th century. It dramatises the escape of the Greek siblings Iphigenia and Orestes, with Orestes' friend Pylades, from the barbarian community of the Taurians on the north coast of the Black Sea, bringing with them an ancient statue of Artemis. The book explores the extent and diversity of the play's cultural impact diachronically. Its first half documents and analyses the reasons for the popularity of the play in antiquity, appearing in Greek and Roman poetry, fiction, philosophy, vase-painting, murals, sarcophagus art, and on coins. The second half discusses the influence of the play since the Renaissance, with particular attention to Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, Frazer's The Golden Bough, Gilbert Murray's Edwardian translation and more recent feminist and postcolonial adaptations.

This book reconsiders several of Augustine's most well-known letter exchanges, including his famously controversial correspondence with Jerome and his efforts to engage his Donatist rivals in a letter exchange. It reads these letters with close attention to conventional epistolary norms and practices, in an effort to identify innovative features of Augustine's epistolary practice. In particular, it notes and analyzes Augustine's adaptation of the traditionally friendly letter exchange to the correction of perceived error in the Christian community. In transforming the practice of letter exchange into a tool of correction, Augustine draws on both the classical philosophical tradition and also scripture. His particular innovation is his insistence that this process of correction can—and often must—be done in the potentially public form of a letter exchange rather than in the privacy of a face-to-face conversation. This is particularly true when the perceived error is one that has the potential to jeopardize the salvation of the entire Christian community. In offering epistolary correction, and requesting reciprocal correction from his correspondents, Augustine treats his practice of letter exchange as a performance of Christian caritas. Indeed, in his view, the friendliest correspondence was that which was concerned solely with preserving the salvation of the participants. In recognizing Augustine's commitment to the corrective correspondence and thus reading his letters with attention to their corrective function, we gain new insights into the complicated dynamics of Augustine's relationships with Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, the Donatists, and Pelagius.

The core of this book is an investigation of the treatment of the recognition motif in the Greek novels. It also includes forays into the Roman novels, early Jewish and Christian narratives, and an overview of a sample of early modern European texts, which have been influenced by the ancient novel in their recognition scenes. The ancient novels inherit the recognition motif from epic and drama, and acknowledge their debts by citations or allusions. They also share an ideological mainstay underlying the poetics of recognition in ancient literature: poetic justice, or “goodness wins.” Recognition rewards the deserving couple with the happy ending (this idealistic scenario is not endorsed by the Roman novels). At the same time, the Greek novels also innovate, adding more “natural” ways of recognition (the voice, appearance, the telling of one’s life, instinct, even breathing) to the artificial and conventional ones (tokens or bodily marks) preferred by tradition. This shift of emphasis is related to the idealization of love typical of the genre. Love itself is recognition and should suffice for lovers to recognize each other. Novelists play with this dictate in a variety of ways, romantically endorsing it or challenging it irreverently. Recognitions of family identity likewise negotiate tradition with innovation, bringing the call of blood, or nature’s voice, to bear on the revelation of kinship between family members unknown to each other. The final pages of this book follow the fortunate developments of the motif of blood’s call in later literature.