By Neil W. Bernstein (NHC Fellow, 2011–12) Rhetorical training was the central component of an elite Roman man's education, and declamations–imaginary courtroom speeches in the character of a fictional or historical individual–were the most advanced exercises in the standard rhetorical curriculum. The Major Declamations is a collection of nineteen full-length Latin speeches attributed in antiquity to Quintilian … Continued
Edited by Matthew Rubery (NHC Fellow, 2018–19) and Leah Price What does reading mean in the twenty-first century? As other disciplines challenge literary criticism’s authority to answer this question, English professors are defining new alternatives to close reading and to interpretation more generally. Further Reading brings together thirty essays drawing on approaches as different as formalism, historicism, … Continued
By Fred Kaplan (NHC Fellow, 1985–86) A vivid portrait of one of the most influential writers in our literary tradition. Kaplan creates a richly woven, psychologically astute portrayal of James' Victorian life and world. James' unpublished letters, as well as published and unpublished family letters, are at the heart of this vivid biography of the … Continued
By Laura Suzanne Lieber (NHC Fellow, 2015–16) In Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, Laura Suzanne Lieber offers annotated translations of sixty-nine poems written between the 4th and 7th century C.E. in the Land of Israel, along with commentaries and introductions. The poems celebrate a range of occasions from the ritual year and the life-cycle: Passover, … Continued
By Gregory Maertz (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) The construction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as an Anglo-American sage and literary icon was the product of a cult of personality that lay at the center of nineteenth-century cultural politics. A reconstruction of the culture wars fought over Goethe's authority, a previously hidden chapter in the intellectual history … Continued
By Andrew Delbanco (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1990–91; 2002–03) If Dickens was nineteenth-century London personified, Herman Melville was the quintessential American. With a historian’s perspective and a critic’s insight, award-winning author Andrew Delbanco marvelously demonstrates that Melville was very much a man of his era and that he recorded — in his books, letters, and marginalia; and … Continued
By Nicholas of CusaTranslated by Jasper Hopkins (NHC Fellow, 1983–84) Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), sometimes misleadingly referred to as the first "modern" philosopher, was born in Kues, Germany (today Bernkastel-Kues). He became a canon lawyer and a cardinal. His two best-known works are De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) and De Visione Dei (On the Vision of God).
By Max Black (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) Shortly before his death in 1988, Max Black brought together for this collection previously published major essays on ten intriguing questions concerning ordinary language, rational choice, and literature. Individual chapters explore such fundamental problems as the puzzles posed by meaning and verification; what metaphor is and how metaphors work; … Continued
By Annabel Patterson (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) For those exhausted by the highly charged debates and polarized climate of literary studies today, Annabel Patterson’s Reading Between the Lines offers a strategic compromise: a moderate stance between the radical opponents and the zealous protectors of the traditional Western canon. She reconsiders the value of reading the white, male, canonical … Continued
Edited by Morris Eaves (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) and Michael Fischer The core of this book is made up of five essays, by distinguished scholars of international reputation, that treat the relation between current literary theory and Romanticism. The book originated in a series of lectures presented at the University of New Mexico in 1983. All … Continued