Books in the Classics in Theory Series series

Although cognitive psychology and neuroscience have usurped the influential position once held by psychoanalysis, this volume seeks to reclaim the value of the unconscious as a methodological tool for the study of ancient texts by transforming our understanding of what it means, how it operates, and how it relates to textual hermeneutics.

The extraordinary contribution that classical poetics has made to twentieth and twenty-first century theories of narrative is explored in detail in this volume, which aims to identify and examine the diachronic affinities shared between ancient and modern narratologies and thereby arrive at a better understanding of both.

Rethinking Metonymy is the first monograph to confront and resolve issues surrounding problematic appropriations of metonymy in the humanities. By developing a ground-breaking new definition based on analysis of examples in Greek tragedy and lyric poetry, it sets an agenda for far-reaching reconsiderations in literary studies and beyond.

Diotima at the Barricades argues that the debates that emerged from the burgeoning of feminist intellectual life in post-modern France involved complex, structured, and reciprocal exchanges on the interpretation and position of Plato and other ancient texts in the western philosophical and literary tradition.

Examining phenomena from Greek and Latin literature through the lens of metalepsis, this volume sheds new light on central features and important dynamics in ancient texts, and advances literary theory by probing how explorations of ancient metalepsis might change, refine, or extend our understanding of the concept itself.

According to the terms of Aristotle's Politics, to be alive is to instantiate an operation of power. This volume addresses the intertwining of power and life in Aristotle's thought, offering a critical re-appraisal of the concepts of life, the animal, and political animality in his political theory.

Inventing the Novel uses the work of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin to explore the ancient origins of the modern novel, focusing on one of classical antiquity's most elusive works, Petronius' Satyrica, and arguing in support of Bakhtin's sweeping claim that it plays an "immense" role in the history of the novel.

The presumed dichotomy between a Greco-Roman paradigm of Western humanism and new theoretical currents in the humanities is exploded in this volume, which explores the myriad ways in which Greek and Roman philosophy and literature can be understood as foregrounding the non-human rather than simply reflecting the ideals of classical humanism.