Thursday, March 31, 2016

Copeland (ed.), The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature 1: 800-1558

NEW BOOK FROM OUP: Penn professor edits new book on classical reception in English literature (Jacquie Posey, Penn Current).
Ancient Greek and Roman poets have inspired generations of writers who came after them. Now, a new book edited by Rita Copeland, the Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor of the Humanities in the School of Arts & Sciences, offers the most comprehensive account ever written of the reception of classical writing in medieval and early Tudor English literature.

Reception history is a field of literary studies that examines how later periods respond to and assimilate products of earlier literary cultures, building on and around these earlier traditions.

“The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature 1: 800-1558” (“OHCREL”) is the first volume in an Oxford University Press five-volume series devoted to the classical tradition in English literature. “OHCREL” synthesizes existing scholarship and presents new research. An international team of experts collaborated on each of the five volumes.

[...]
Ancient Judaism also figures in the book:
“OHCREL” also outlines how the history of Jewish antiquity found a place in medieval English culture through translations and adaptations of the ancient historian Josephus and his “Jewish Wars.”