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Rooted in a range of approaches to the reception of classical drama, the chapters in this book reflect, in one way or another, that Greek and Roman drama in performance is an ongoing dialogue between the culture(s) of the original and the target culture of its translation/adaptation/performance. The individual case studies highlight the various ways in which the tradition of Greek and Roman plays in performance has been extremely productive, but also the ways in which it has engaged, at times dangerously, in political and social discourse.
The Myth of Hercules and Omphale in the Visual Arts, 1500–1800
The book examines the myth of Hercules and Omphale/Iole which became an important topic in the visual arts, 1500–1800. It offers an analysis of the iconography from the perspective of the history of emotions, classical and Neo-Latin philology, reception and gender studies. The early modern inventions of the myth excel in a skilful display of mixed and compound emotions, such as the male character's psychopathology, and of the theatrical performance of emotions by the female character.
Cosmology, Music, Medicine, and Architecture from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century
Plato’s Timaeus inspired a uniquely enduring interest across disciplines. In the centuries between its composition and the seventeenth century, scholars looked to this dialogue for answers to questions about the structure of the universe and how to live a healthy and happy life. They saw cosmology as vital to medicine and ethics; and, for them, harmony in music and architecture facilitated balance in the human soul. The Legacy of Plato’s Timaeus explores how the dialogue transformed the disciplines of cosmology, music, medicine, and architecture, and how new intellectual and cultural developments in turn shaped and re-contextualized interpretations of Plato’s ideas.

The Hero on Stage from the Enlightenment to the Early Twenty-First Century
Volume Editor:
Hercules Performed explores the reception of the ancient Greek hero Herakles – the Roman Hercules – on the western stage from the sixteenth century to the present day, focusing on live theatre, including tragedy, comedy and musical drama. Each chapter considers a particular work or theme in detail, exploring the interplay between classical models and a wide variety of modern performance contexts. The volume is one of four to be published in the Metaforms series examining the extraordinarily persistent figuring of Herakles-Hercules in western culture, drawing together scholars from a range of disciplines to offer a unique insight into the hero’s perennial appeal.
Sources, Iconography and Science
Leonardo’s Fables explores the compositional methods and sources of Leonardo’s fables and their relationship to illustrations and scientific studies. By concentrating on the chaotic character of Leonardo’s textual and visual annotations, the author gradually discloses the artist’s creative thinking that uses the page as a space for experimentation.

Fables allow Leonardo to tie together his technical and artistic skills, empirical observation, and experience to reveal the interactive forces at the basis of physical phenomena and the tensions between painting and humanistic culture. This study reevaluates Leonardo’s fables as part of a literary, aesthetic, and scientific project aimed at the investigation of Nature.
Transmissions, Receptions, and Regional Contexts
Japan on the Jesuit Stage offers a comprehensive overview of the representations of Japan in early modern European Neo-Latin school theater. The chapters in the volume catalog and analyze representative plays which were produced in the hundreds all over Europe, from the Iberian Peninsula to present-day Croatia and Poland.

Taking full account of existing scholarship, but also introducing a large amount of previously unknown primary material, the contributions by European and Japanese researchers significantly expand the horizon of investigation on early modern European theatrical reception of East Asian elements and will be of particular interest to students of global history, Neo-Latin, and theater studies.
Imagination in Renaissance Art and Theory from Botticelli to Michelangelo
Did the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) influence the art of his time? Art historians have been fiercely debating this question for decades. This book starts with Ficino’s views on the imagination as a faculty of the soul, and shows how these ideas were part of a long philosophical tradition and inspired fresh insights. This approach, combined with little known historical material, offers a new understanding of whether, how and why Ficino’s Platonic conceptions of the imagination may have been received in the art of the Italian Renaissance. The discussion explores Ficino’s possible influence on the work of Botticelli and Michelangelo, and examines the appropriation of Ficino’s ideas by early modern art theorists.
The Intersection of Art, Science, and Nature in Ancient Literature and its Renaissance Reception
Editor:
The interplay between nature, science, and art in antiquity and the early modern period differs significantly from late modern expectations. In this book scholars from ancient studies as well as early modern studies, art history, literary criticism, philosophy, and the history of science, explore that interplay in several influential ancient texts and their reception in the Renaissance. The Natural History of Pliny, De Architectura of Vitruvius, De Rerum Natura of Lucretius, Automata of Hero, and Timaios of Plato among other texts reveal how fields of inquiry now considered distinct were originally understood as closely interrelated. In our choice of texts, we focus on materialistic theories of nature, knowledge, and art that remain underappreciated in ancient and early modern studies even today.
Pictorial and Literary Transformations in Various Media, 1400–1800
Volume Editors: and
This volume explores early modern recreations of myths from Ovid’s immensely popular Metamorphoses, focusing on the creative ingenium of artists and writers and on the peculiarities of the various media that were applied. The contributors try to tease out what (pictorial) devices, perspectives, and interpretative markers were used that do not occur in the original text of the Metamorphoses, what aspects were brought to the fore or emphasized, and how these are to be explained. Expounding the whatabouts of these differences, the contributors discuss the underlying literary and artistic problems, challenges, principles and techniques, the requirements of the various literary and artistic media, and the role of the cultural, ideological, religious, and gendered contexts in which these recreations were produced.

Contributors are: Noam Andrews, Claudia Cieri Via, Daniel Dornhofer, Leonie Drees-Drylie, Karl A.E. Enenkel, Daniel Fulco, Barbara Hryszko, Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich, Jan L. de Jong, Andrea Lozano-Vásquez, Sabine Lütkemeyer, Morgan J. Macey, Kerstin Maria Pahl, Susanne Scholz, Robert Seidel, and Patricia Zalamea.
Variations on Racinian Excuses
Author:
This comparative literary study re-evaluates the reciprocal relationship between tragic drama and current approaches to guilt and extenuation. Focussing on Racine but ranging widely, it sheds original light on tragic archetypes (Phaedra, Oedipus, Clytemnestra, Medea and others) through the lenses of performance theory and modern attitudes towards blame.
Tragic drama and legal systems both aim to evaluate the merits of excuses provided on behalf of perpetrators of catastrophic acts. Edward Forman wittily and provocatively explores modern judicial concepts – diminished responsibility, provocation, trauma, ignorance, scapegoating – through the responses of characters in tragedy. Attention is paid to the way in which classical plays (ancient Greek and seventeenth-century French) have been re-interpreted in performance in the light of modern perceptions of human responsibility and helplessness.