Waltharius and the Epic Quest for Epic Poetry
Waltharius edited and translated by Abram Ring. Peeters, 2016. Paperback, 198 pages, $63. A. M. JUSTER Western literature begins with greatness on a grand scale. Homer’s magnificent epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, created the framework and the impetus for...The Epistolary Petrarch
Selected Letters: Volumes I & II by Francesco Petrarca, translated and edited by Elaine Fantham. Harvard University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 800 + 816 pages, $30 + $30.Contemporary readers of poetry tend to underestimate the power and influence of the Canzoniere of...Airing Rome’s Dirty Laundry
Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet by Daisy Dunn. Harper, 2016. Hardcover, 336 pages, $26.In the United States we cede too much control of the humanities to professors who wall off their subject matters from the public with the rhetoric of...
Epic, Rock, Camp, and Beowulf
Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage by Jason Craig and Dave Malloy. Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, RI. Run: September 8–October 9, 2016. America lacks a national epic that helps to define our national identity. In English we inherited from the British two...
Rachel Hadas’s Pastorals mirrors the house within its pages—static, but, like the windows, each one provides a different view each time it is read, depending on the changes in the seasons and the weather of the reader’s life. Pastorals invites you in, shows you around, tells a
Rediscovering the lost ideal of leisure is highly worthwhile regardless of whether we are headed for a world in which humans need not apply for most jobs. Tabachnick’s book is a fruitful and thought-provoking exploration of how we might realize this ideal. - Robert Rich on THE