{"title":"Thomas Biggs","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"plautus-poenulus-book-thomas-biggs-9781350379060","title":"Plautus: Poenulus","description":"\u003cp\u003ePlautus’ Poenulus (\u003ci\u003eThe Little Carthaginian\u003c\/i\u003e) is a work of staggering literary and\u003cbr\u003ehistorical significance. Performed in the long shadow of Rome’s struggle with\u003cbr\u003eHannibal’s Carthage, this play stages the restoration of a Carthaginian family\u003cbr\u003edivided through enslavement. Set against the backdrop of a Greece marked by\u003cbr\u003ecomedic expectations and the geography of contemporary imperial conquest,\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePoenulus \u003c\/i\u003epresents a tale of Carthaginian heartbreak and heartache to a postwar\u003cbr\u003eRoman audience. The comedy’s remarkable diversity prompts audience\u003cbr\u003einteraction with a wide range of socio-cultural topics relevant to Plautus’ time.\u003cbr\u003eEngaging weighty matters through song, slapstick, puns, and spectacle, \u003ci\u003ePoenulus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003emay appear to defang, but its bite is deep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book offers an innovative understanding of \u003ci\u003ePoenulus\u003c\/i\u003e’ place in Roman history\u003cbr\u003eand literary culture, helping readers to appreciate the play itself, the complex\u003cbr\u003enature of Plautine authorship, and the cultures of performance in Republican\u003cbr\u003eRome. Most of the book explores the play as a performance, from its unique and\u003cbr\u003estrikingly self-aware prologue to the actors’ call for applause in the final line.\u003cbr\u003eThe longest chapter examines the play’s afterlives in the Renaissance and early\u003cbr\u003emodern period, including little-known revivals and adaptations in Ferrara, Rome,\u003cbr\u003eand Cambridge. Over the centuries, people have found in \u003ci\u003ePoenulus\u003c\/i\u003e a script well\u003cbr\u003esuited to active learning in the Latin classroom, a text capable of supporting\u003cbr\u003enew political ideologies, and a dramatized vision of the world that accorded\u003cbr\u003ewith processes of racialization in Europe as reengagement with the classical past\u003cbr\u003ecoincided with the expansion of the slave trade and the objectification of Black\u003cbr\u003eAfricans. That one play has been seen to support and subvert the same outlooks\u003cbr\u003eand practices is a testament to its complexity and to the enduring power of all Plautine verse from the third century BCE to the present.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51603688685841,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51603688882449,"sku":"NGR9781350379060","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53720412979473,"sku":"NLS9781350379060","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1350379069.jpg?v=1788375806"},{"product_id":"epic-journey-in-greek-and-roman-literature-book-thomas-biggs-9781108498098","title":"The Epic Journey in Greek and Roman Literature","description":"This volume explores journeys across time and space in Greek and Latin literature, taking as its starting point the paradigm of travel offered by the epic genre. The epic journey is central to the dynamics of classical literature, offering a powerful lens through which characters, authors, and readers experience their real and imaginary worlds. The journey informs questions of identity formation, narrative development, historical emplotment, and constructions of heroism - topics that move through and beyond the story itself. The act of moving to and from 'home' - both a fixed point of spatial orientation and a transportable set of cultural values - thus represents a physical journey and an intellectual process. In exploring its many manifestations, the chapters in this collection reconceive the centrality of the epic journey across a wide variety of genres and historical contexts, from Homer to the moon.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52618868261137,"sku":"NLS9781108498098","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52746768744721,"sku":"NIN9781108498098","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781108498098.jpg?v=1786278375"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-thomas-biggs.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}