University of Chicago Press: New Titles in Literature and Literary Criticism: Classical Languages

Arbitrary Rule

Mary Nyquist — Fri, 10 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Slavery appears as a figurative construct during the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century, and again in the American and French revolutions, when radicals represent their treatment as a form of political slavery. What, if anything, does figurative, political slavery have to do with transatlantic slavery? In Arbitrary Rule, Mary Nyquist explores connections between political and chattel slavery by excavating the tradition of Western political thought that justifies actively opposing tyranny. She argues that as powerful rhetorical and conceptual constructs, Greco-Roman political liberty and slavery reemerge at the time of early modern Eurocolonial expansion; they help to create racialized “free” national identities and their “unfree” counterparts in non-European nations represented as inhabiting an earlier, privative age.

Arbitrary Rule is the first book to tackle political slavery’s discursive complexity, engaging Eurocolonialism, political philosophy, and literary studies, areas of study too often kept apart. Nyquist proceeds through analyses not only of texts that are canonical in political thought—by Aristotle, Cicero, Hobbes, and Locke—but also of literary works by Euripides, Buchanan, Vondel, Montaigne, and Milton, together with a variety of colonialist and political writings, with special emphasis on tracts written during the English revolution. She illustrates how “antityranny discourse,” which originated in democratic Athens, was adopted by republican Rome, and revived in early modern Western Europe, provided members of a “free” community with a means of protesting a threatened reduction of privileges or of consolidating a collective, political identity. Its semantic complexity, however, also enabled it to legitimize racialized enslavement and imperial expansion.

Throughout, Nyquist demonstrates how principles relating to political slavery and tyranny are bound up with a Roman jurisprudential doctrine that sanctions the power of life and death held by the slaveholder over slaves and, by extension, the state, its representatives, or its laws over its citizenry.

Greek Tragedies 1

Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Greek Tragedies, Volume I contains Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon,” translated by Richmond Lattimore; Aeschylus’s “Prometheus Bound,” translated by David Grene; Sophocles’s “Oedipus the King,” translated by David Grene; Sophocles’s “Antigone,” translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff; and Euripides’s “Hippolytus,” translated by David Grene.

Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, those translations combined accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation to render the surviving masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in an English so lively and compelling that they remain the standard translations. Today, Chicago is taking pains to ensure that our Greek tragedies remain the leading English-language versions throughout the twenty-first century.

In this highly anticipated third edition, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy for which our English versions are famous. This edition also includes brand-new translations of Euripides’ Medea, The Children of Heracles, Andromache, and Iphigenia among the Taurians, fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus, and the surviving portion of Sophocles’s satyr-drama The Trackers. New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. In addition, each volume includes an introduction to the life and work of its tragedian, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays.

In addition to the new content, the volumes have been reorganized both within and between volumes to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship on the order in which the plays were originally written. The result is a set of handsome paperbacks destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.

Aeschylus II

Aeschylus; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore; Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Aeschylus II contains “The Oresteia,” translated by Richmond Lattimore, and fragments of “Proteus,” translated by Mark Griffith.

Euripides II

Euripides; Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Euripides II contains the plays “Andromache,” translated by Deborah Roberts; “Hecuba,” translated by William Arrowsmith; “The Suppliant Women,” translated by Frank William Jones; and “Electra,” translated by Emily Townsend Vermeule.

Euripides I

Euripides; Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Euripides I contains the plays “Alcestis,” translated by Richmond Lattimore; “Medea,” translated by Oliver Taplin; “The Children of Heracles,” translated by Mark Griffith; and “Hippolytus,” translated by David Grene.

Euripides III

Euripides; Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Euripides III contains the plays “Heracles,” translated by William Arrowsmith; “The Trojan Women,” translated by Richmond Lattimore; “Iphigenia among the Taurians,” translated by Anne Carson; and “Ion,” translated by Ronald Frederick Willetts.

Euripides V

Euripides; Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Euripides V includes the plays “The Bacchae,” translated by William Arrowsmith; “Iphigenia in Aulis,” translated by Charles R. Walker; “The Cyclops,” translated by William Arrowsmith; and “Rhesus,” translated by Richmond Lattimore.

Greek Tragedies 2

Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Greek Tragedies, Volume II contains Aeschylus’s “The Libation Bearers,” translated by Richmond Lattimore; Sophocles’s “Electra,” translated by David Grene; Euripides’s “Iphigenia among the Taurians,” translated by Anne Carson; Euripides’s “Electra,” translated by Emily Townsend Vermeule; and Euripides’s “The Trojan Women,” translated by Richmond Lattimore.

Greek Tragedies 3

Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Greek Tragedies, Volume III contains Aeschylus’s “The Eumenides,” translated by Richmond Lattimore; Sophocles’s “Philoctetes,” translated by David Grene; Sophocles’s “Oedipus at Colonus,” translated by Robert Fitzgerald; Euripides’s “The Bacchae,” translated by William Arrowsmith; and Euripides’s “Alecestis,” translated by Richmond Lattimore.

Sophocles II

Sophocles; Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Sophocles II contains the plays “Ajax,” translated by John Moore; “The Women of Trachis,” translated by Michael Jameson; “Electra,” translated by David Grene; “Philoctetes,” translated by David Grene; and “The Trackers,” translated by Mark Griffith.

Sophocles I

Sophocles; Mark Griffith; Glenn W. Most; David Grene; Richmond Lattimore — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Sophocles I contains the plays “Antigone,” translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff; “Oedipus the King,” translated by David Grene; and “Oedipus at Colonus,” translated by Robert Fitzgerald.