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Greek literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2025
Extract
In my last review I discussed Mark Usher's How to Care About Animals, one of Princeton University Press’ volumes of Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers. The series’ rapidly growing roster now includes Sarah Nooter's book How To Be Queer: An Ancient Guide to Sexuality. Nooter selects, translates, and introduces a range of texts from Sappho and Plato (most heavily featured) to Homer, Pindar, Alcman, Anacreon, Theognis, and Theocritus (to name just a selection of the selection). There is an important ‘nothing new under the sun’ ethos to this volume, as is the case with many in the series. As Nooter puts it, ‘The past decade has seen a revolution in sexuality… sexual fluidity is now mainstream… And yet the Greeks got there long ago.’ (vii) The Greeks wrote about sexuality ‘with little angst and much wit’, and it is this that Stephen Fry picks up on in his endorsement of the book: ‘our ancestors often had clearer, less guilt-ridden, confused, prurient, and prudish attitudes to the rainbow of sexualities we wrongly think unique to our age’.
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References
1 How To Be Queer: An Ancient Guide to Sexuality: Sappho, Plato, and Other Lovers. By Sarah Nooter. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2024. Pp. xi + 245. Hardback $17.95, ISBN: 978-0-691-24861-5.
2 Disability and Healing in Greek and Roman Myth. By Christian Laes. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 72. Paperback £17, ISBN: 978-1-00-933553-9.
3 See my last review on Emma Bridges’ Warriors’ Wives.
4 The Ancient Sea: The Utopian and Catastrophic in Classical Narratives and their Reception. Edited by Hamish Williams and Ross Clare. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 311. Hardback £95, ISBN: 978-1-80207-760-5, paperback £29.99, ISBN: 978-1-83553-795-4.
5 Jokes in Greek Comedy: From Puns to Poetics. By Naomi Scott. London, Bloomsbury, 2023. Pp. x + 181. Hardback £85, ISBN: 978-1-350-24848-9, paperback £28.99, ISBN: 978-1-350-24849-6.
6 A Cultural History of Comedy in Antiquity. Edited by Michael Ewans. London, Bloomsbury, 2022. Pp. xiv + 227. 10 illustrations. Hardback $77, ISBN: 978-1-350-00071-1, paperback £25.99, ISBN: 978-1-350-44069-2.
8 Aristophanes: Wasps and Other Plays. By Stephen Halliwell. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2024. Pp. cv +359. Paperback £8.99, ISBN: 978-0-19-890022-1.
9 Aristophanes Cavalry. By Robert Tordoff. London, Bloomsbury, 2024. Pp. xi + 171. 4 illustrations. Hardback £70, ISBN: 978-1-350-06567-3, paperback £22.99, ISBN: 978-1-350-06568-0.
10 The Play of Language in Ancient Greek Comedy: Comic Discourse and Linguistic Artifices of Humour, From Aristophanes to Menander. Edited by Kostas E. Apostolakis and Ioannis M. Konstantakos. Berlin, De Gruyter, 2024. Pp. viii + 437. 3 tables. Hardback £118.50, ISBN: 978-3-11-129449-0.