Compitum

Elizabeth Dawson, Lives and Afterlives. The Hiberno-Latin Patrician Tradition, 650-1100, Turnhout, 2023.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Studia Traditionis Theologiae
179 p. pages
ISBN : 978-2-503-60604-0
€ 70 (excl. VAT)

Saint Patrick is a central figure in the medieval Irish Church. As the converter saint he was a central anchor through which Irish people came to understand their complicated religious past as well as their new place in the wider Christian world. This study considers some of the earliest and most influential writings focused on Saint Patrick, and asks how successive generations forged, sustained and redirected aspects of the saint's persona in order to suit their specific religious and political needs.

Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, Reform, Revolution, Reaction. A Short History of Rome from the Origins of the Social War to the Dictatorship of Sulla, Saragosse, 2023.

Éditeur : Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza
Collection : Libera Res Publica
292 pages
ISBN : 978-84-1340-707-4
25 €

In 133 and 123/122 BCE, the Gracchan reforms opened three cans of worms, pitting the Roman landowning elites against their poorer compatriots, Roman economic interests against those of the Italian allies, and senators against equestrians. As these cumulative divisions threatened to coalesce into a perfect storm, the noble and wealthy tribune of the plebs M. Livius Drusus in 91 boldly proposed a comprehensive if costly New Deal. The eventual annulment of Drusus' visionary reform package set the stage for the armed rebellion of Rome's key Italic allies. Even before the conclusion of this gargantuan struggle in 87, the deep divisions Drusus and his backers had sought to resolve, compounded by political discontent among the enfranchised Italians, caused the Roman polity to descend into a series of devastating civil wars, terminated in 82/81 by Sulla's vindictive victory and reactionary new settlement. Offering a novel narrative analysis of the pivotal events of this well-known but often poorly understood period, this book seeks to demonstrate how the time from Livius Drusus' tribunate of the plebs to Sulla's unparalleled dictatorship was marked by momentous reform and experimentation and suggests that the former's fateful failure arguably represents the moment the Romans lost their ancestral Republic.

Source : Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza

D. Acolat et Y. Maligorne (éd.), Ruines méditerranéennes et photographie ancienne, Rennes, 2023.

Éditeur : Presses Universitaires de Rennes
Collection : Archéologie et culture
268 pages
ISBN : 9782753594579
35 €

Au milieu du XIXe siècle apparaît un nouveau média qui documente les sites et monuments antiques : la photographie.
Sources historiques de grande valeur, ces vues sont devenues objets d'étude pour les choix esthétiques dont elles relèvent, leur contribution à l'élaboration et la diffusion des savoirs, leur rôle dans la formation d'un imaginaire et dans la « réception » de l'Antiquité, mais aussi leur dimension commerciale dans l'histoire du tourisme autour de la Méditerranée.
De l'Afrique du Nord à la Perse, en passant par Pompéi, Rome, la Grèce, la France et l'Égypte, nous suivons les photographes dans les vestiges antiques du Bassin méditerranéen à travers des fonds inédits, pour comprendre leurs motivations, leurs démarches, et parfois leurs difficultés. Ces vues d'une grande précision se multiplient au cours des décennies, documentant les nouvelles découvertes et les mises en valeur d'un patrimoine qu'on entend préserver de la destruction.

Robert C. Bartlett et Nasser Behnegar (éd.), Political Rhetoric in Theory and Practice, Cambridge, 2023.

Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
376 pages
ISBN : 9781009367387
£ 25.99

Political Rhetoric in Theory and Practice is an introduction to the art of rhetoric or persuasive speaking. A collection of primary sources, it combines classic statements of the theory of political rhetoric (Aristotle, Isocrates, Demosthenes, Cicero) with a rich array of political speeches, from Socrates to Martin Luther King Jr., Pericles to Richard Nixon, Sojourner Truth to Phyllis Schlafly. These speeches exemplify not only the three principal kinds of rhetoric – judicial, deliberative, and epideictic – but also the principal rhetorical proofs. Grouped thematically, the speeches boast a diversity of speakers, subject matters, and themes. At a time when the practice of democracy and democratic deliberation are much in question, this book seeks to encourage the serious study of rhetoric by making available important examples of it, in both its noblest and its most scurrilous forms.

Source : Cambridge University Press

Adrien Bresson, Alice Baudequin et Jonathan Raffin (dir.), Genre et sources. Lecture, relecture, mélecture depuis l'Antiquité, Neuville-sur-Saône, 2023.

Éditeur : Chemin de Tr@verses
Collection : Tr@boules
178 pages
ISBN : 978-2-313-00672-6
31 €

L'enjeu de cet ouvrage est d'interroger le lien entre le genre, que l'on peut définir comme les composantes non physiologiques du sexe perçues comme appropriées aux individus de sexe masculin et aux individus de sexe féminin, champ de recherche mis en avant par les gender studies, et les sources. Il s'agit donc de lire ces dernières sous l'angle du genre, d'en proposer une relecture, voire d'envisager une mélecture dont le but devient dès lors de proposer une nouvelle lecture des sources. La confrontation des disciplines (lettres classiques, littérature étrangère, histoire, sociologie, anthropologie) et des époques, depuis l'Antiquité, a permis de mettre au jour des approches aux sources propres à chaque discipline, qui peuvent nonobstant se révéler complémentaires, encourageant un examen pluriel des sources, à la lumière d'un prisme encore peu exploré.

Marco Bardini, Il cinema mediavaloide 1965-1976, Pise, 2023.

Éditeur : Edizioni ETS
292 pages
ISBN : 9788846766489
26 €

Il volume narra vita morte e miracoli (soprattutto al botteghino) di quella commedia cinematografica in costume che tra il 1965 e il 1976, rifacendosi principalmente alla novellistica del XIV-XVI secolo, ottenne uno straordinario successo popolare. Ma non di critica. Fu un filone polimorfo e onnivoro, a vocazione trash, che ebbe la spavalderia di mettere in competizione accreditati registi come Lattuada, Scola e Monicelli, e onesti artigiani di lungo corso come Festa Campanile, Amendola e Corbucci; fuoriclasse instabilmente talentuosi del cinema bis come Aristide Massaccesi, Antonio Margheriti e Mariano Laurenti, e malestrosi travèt della celluloide come Luigi Batzella, Enrico Bomba e Marino Girolami (per citarne alcuni). A non dire delle schegge impazzite. Nella faccenda, inoltre, finirono coinvolti intellettuali come Pasolini (con l'intera sua Trilogia della vita) e lo scrittore Luigi Malerba; nonché gente di teatro come Zeffirelli, Garinei & Giovannini, Gianfranco De Bosio. Nomi illustri o spregevoli che vollero trascinare in platea le vecchie storie di Machiavelli e Boccaccio, di Ruzante e Aretino, assieme a quelle di Bandello, Masuccio, Bibbiena, Sacchetti, Vasari e tanti altri. Con in più un'eccentrica considerazione per Le mille e una notte, Chaucer e il Kamasutra, il marchese de Sade, Cenerentola e Balzac. A un certo punto si volle denominare tutto ciò “decamerotico”, più nel male che nel bene. Col senno di poi, è suggerito qui di ribattezzarlo “cinema medievaloide”.