Although a man named “Homer” was accepted in antiquity as the author of the poems, there is no evidence supporting the existence of such an author. By the late 1700s, careful dissection of the Iliad and Odyssey raised doubts about their composition by a single poet. Explore more about the “Homeric question” and the influence of these epics in the infographic below.
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By Andrew Zurcher
The “Februarie” eclogue of Edmund Spenser’s pastoral collection, The Shepheardes Calender, was first published in 1579. It presents a conversation between two shepherds, a brash “Heardmans boye” called Cuddie and an old stick-in-the-mud named Thenot. The two of them meet on a cold winter day and get into an argument about age: Cuddie thinks Thenot is a wasted and weak-kneed whinger, while Thenot blames Cuddie for his heedless and slightly arrogant headstrongness. To support his position, Thenot tells a moralising tale about an ambitious young briar and a hoary oak. In his eagerness to flaunt his brave blooms full in the sun, the briar persuades a local husbandman to chop down the mossy tree; but the end of the tale turns bitter for the little plant when, deprived of the sheltering support of his onetime neighbour, he is utterly blown away in a heavy gale. Thenot is in the middle of applying the moral of his tale when Cuddie interrupts, and leaves in a huff – petulant and dismissive to the last. As the eclogue breaks off, the reader is caught in an old-fashioned and hackneyed dilemma: is it better to embrace the beautiful but rootless new, or cling to the solid, gnarled old?
June Aegloga Sexta. Source: New York Public Library.
poses this gnarled horn of a problem in the middle of a printed book that, itself, has already begun to play in a very material way with the tensions between antiquity and
newfangleness. Spenser’s eclogues are conspicuously modeled on those of
Theocritus and
Virgil,
Marot and
Mantuan. The poems were first published elaborated with E.K.’s prefaces, his introductions (or “Arguments”) to each of the twelve
“aeglogae,” and his explanatory notes. These annotations are presented in a Roman type that contrasts visually with the black letter of Spenser’s poetry, framing it in a style that emulated early modern editions of Virgil’s eclogues, as well as the theological and legal texts that, in this humanist period, were often produced entirely engulfed in glosses and comments. Each of the eclogues is also accompanied by a woodcut, done in a rough style, and concludes with an “embleme” apiece for each of the eclogue’s interlocutors. These archaising features belie the novelty of Spenser’s project – the first complete set of original pastoral poems in English, and a collection that, in its allegorical engagement with the history of England’s recent and successive reformations, put this country and its fledgling literary culture on the map. Here at last was England’s Virgil, said Spenser himself. Just look at his book. But is it an old book, or a new book? Is it new-old, or old-new? What is the meaning of the new, if it be not interpreted by the old?
One of the most exciting aspects digitizing works such as in the Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) project is
Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant
Cleopatra’s sexual liaisons have made her for being the femme fatale of classical antiquity and a heroine in the greatest love affair of all time. In Cleopatra: A Biography historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar Duane Roller aims to clear up the infamous queen’s identity—from the propaganda in the Roman Republic all the way to her representations in film today. And what, according to Roller, do the cold hard facts reveal? A pragmatic leader trying to save her kingdom as the reality of a full blown empire loomed ahead.
For more on your favorite queen tune in for Day 2 tomorrow.
Michelle Rafferty: Your new book Cleopatra argues that much of what we think about Cleopatra is sensationalized or untrue. Why is it that our understanding of the Egyptian queen is so skewed, and who is the real Cleopatra?
Duane Roller: Well in terms of your first question, about why is the understanding so skewed, there are really two reasons. One is that much of what we know about her is from her enemies who defeated her, who obviously wanted to create her as a genuine threat to the Roman Republic, and indulge in a great deal of propaganda as to how horrible this women was, all of the terrible, nasty things she did, and obviously there’s a certain amount of gender issues built into this as well. The second is reason is that because Cleopatra was such a fascinating character, she became almost an icon in art and literature and drama, starting probably with Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, but continuing down through a vast number of representations in the visual arts, Delacroix and others, opera, masonry’s Cleopatra, and of course in the 20th century ending up with well known film and cinema representations. And so that of course emphasizes the scandalous and dramatic by necessity, and has kind of overwhelmed the relatively scant information about the women herself.
Who is the real Cleopatra? Well she was a woman who inherited a dying kingdom, who was the only woman to rule alone in all of classical antiquity, and tried to salvage the situation against the overwhelming power of Rome. She also, if her kingdom was to survive, she had to produce heirs. And that meant personal involvement in the way that a male ruler would not have. She was a linguist, she was a published author, a skilled military commander—all of which makes her a fascinating woman without necessarily some of the scandalous material that we’ve come to know and love so much about her life.
