Romm Theophrastus' Characters

An Ancient Take on Bad Behavior
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-0-935112-98-6
Verlag: Callaway Arts & Entertainment
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 100 Seiten

'These Characters are people we know-they're our quirky neighbors, our creepy bosses, our blind dates from hell. Sharp-tongued Theophrastus, made sharper than ever in this fresh new edition, reminds us that Athenian weirdness is as ageless as Athenian wisdom.' -Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Cambridge University, presenter of BBC's Civilisations

When Aristotle wrote that that 'comedy is about people worse than ourselves,' he may have been recalling a hard-edged gem of a treatise written by his favorite student, Theophrastus. is a joyous festival of fault-finding: a collection of thirty closely observed personality portraits, defining the full spectrum of human flaws, failings, and follies. With piquant details of speech and behavior taken straight off the streets of ancient Athens, Theophrastus gives us sketches of the mean, vile, and annoying that are comically distorted yet vividly real.

Enlivened by Pamela Mensch's fresh translation-the first widely available English version in over half a century- transports us to a world populated by figures of flesh and blood, not bronze and marble. The wry, inventive drawings help envoke the cankered wit of this most modern of ancient texts. Lightly but helpfully annotated by classicist James Romm, these thirty thumbnail portraits are startlingly recognizable twenty-three centuries later. The characters of Theophrastus are archetypes of human nature that remain insightful, caustic, and relevant.

James Romm is an author, reviewer, and the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College in Annadale, New York. His reviews and essays have appeared in the and s Book Review, among other publications. His books include (Princeton University Press, 1992), and the (Vintage, 2012), (Vintage, 2014), (W. W. Norton, 2017), and (Princeton University Press, 2018).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Romm, James