From Homer to Sophocles and Greek Middle Comedy, and from Plato and Protagoras to Ovid, this volume features a panoramic and cross-generic overview of the diverse handling and ad hoc elaboration of the overarching literary notions of "time" and "space". The twenty-one contributions of this volume written by an international group of esteemed scholars provide an equal number of hermeneutic approaches to individual, distinct aspects of Greek and Latin literature. The volume is purposely designed not as a linear display of knowledge, but rather as an anthology of select paradigms that aim to demonstrate the multidimensional function and multifaceted role of the twin notions of "time" and "space" throughout ancient Greek and Latin literary texts. The volume opens with analyses of conspicuous cases from epic poetry, proceeds with examples from drama (tragedy and comedy), and concludes with diverse instances of chronotopes (empirical, imaginary, and even shifting ones), in various literary genres. The volume is of greatest relevance since it meets the cultural and theoretical trends of today’s Classics. It therefore will attract not only the interest of specialised Classicists but it is also intended for a wider general readership.

From Homer to Sophocles and Greek Middle Comedy, and from Plato and Protagoras to Ovid, this volume features a panoramic and cross-generic overview of the diverse handling and ad hoc elaboration of the overarching literary notions of "time" and "space". The twenty-one contributions of this volume written by an international group of esteemed scholars provide an equal number of hermeneutic approaches to individual, distinct aspects of Greek and Latin literature. The volume is purposely designed not as a linear display of knowledge, but rather as an anthology of select paradigms that aim to demonstrate the multidimensional function and multifaceted role of the twin notions of "time" and "space" throughout ancient Greek and Latin literary texts. The volume opens with analyses of conspicuous cases from epic poetry, proceeds with examples from drama (tragedy and comedy), and concludes with diverse instances of chronotopes (empirical, imaginary, and even shifting ones), in various literary genres. The volume is of greatest relevance since it meets the cultural and theoretical trends of today’s Classics. It therefore will attract not only the interest of specialised Classicists but it is also intended for a wider general readership.

Research on medieval and early modern travel literature has made great progress, which now allows us to take the next step and to analyze the correlations between the individual and space throughout time, which contributed essentially to identity formation in many different settings. The contributors to this volume engage with a variety of pre-modern texts, images, and other documents related to travel and the individual's self-orientation in foreign lands and make an effort to determine the concept of identity within a spatial framework often determined by the meeting of various cultures. Moreover, objects, images and words can also travel and connect people from different worlds through books. The volume thus brings together new scholarship focused on the interrelationship of travel, space, time, and individuality, which also includes, of course, women's movement through the larger world, whether in concrete terms or through proxy travel via readings. Travel here is also examined with respect to craftsmen's activities at various sites, artists' employment for many different projects all over Europe and elsewhere, and in terms of metaphysical experiences (catabasis).

This volume sets out to discuss a crucial question for ancient comedy – what makes Aristophanes funny? Too often Aristophanes' humour is taken for granted as merely a tool for the delivery of political and social commentary. But Greek Old Comedy was above all else designed to amuse people, to win the dramatic competition by making the audience laugh the hardest. Any discussion of Aristophanes therefore needs to take into account the ways in which his humour actually works. This question is addressed in two ways. The first half of the volume offers an in-depth discussion of humour theory – a field heretofore largely overlooked by classicists and Aristophanists – examining various theoretical models within the specific context of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays. In the second half, contributors explore Aristophanic humour more practically, examining how specific linguistic techniques and performative choices affect the reception of humour, and exploring the range of subjects Aristophanes tackles as vectors for his comedy. A focus on performance shapes the narrative, since humour lives or dies on the stage – it is never wholly comprehensible on the page alone.

Ovid's Fasti comments on Augustan religion by means of ambivalent aetiologies, elegiac jokes and subtle allusions to the religious self-fashioning of the imperial family. Darja Sterbenc Erker carefully reconstructs Ovid's subtle unmasking of religious fundaments of Augustus' principate.

Religion and cinema share a capacity for world making, ritualizing, mythologizing, and creating sacred time and space. Through cinematography, mise-en-scène, editing, and other production activities, film takes the world “out there” and refashions it. Religion achieves similar ends by setting apart particular objects and periods of time, telling stories, and gathering people together for communal actions and concentrated focus. The result of both cinema and religious practice is a re-created world: a world of fantasy, a world of ideology, a world we long to live in, or a world we wish to avoid at all costs. Religion and Film introduces readers to both religious studies and film studies by focusing on the formal similarities between cinema and religious practices and on the ways they each re-create the world. Explorations of film show how the cinematic experience relies on similar aesthetic devices on which religious rituals have long relied: sight, sound, the taste of food, the body, and communal experience. Meanwhile, a deeper understanding of the aesthetic nature of religious rituals can alter our understanding of film production. Utilizing terminology and theoretical insights from the study of religion as well as the study of film, Religion and Film shows that by paying attention to the ways films are constructed, we can shed new light on the ways religious myths and rituals are constructed and vice versa. This thoroughly revised and expanded new edition is designed to appeal to the needs of courses in religion as well as film departments. In addition to two new chapters, this edition has been restructured into three distinct sections that offer students and instructors theories and methods for thinking about cinema in ways that more fully connect film studies with religious studies.