by William Hansen (1998)
Not all readers in ancient Greece whiled away the hours with Homer, Plato, or Sophocles - at least, not always. Many enjoyed light reading, such as can be found in the pages of this lively anthology. Various types of popular writing - novels, short stories, books of jokes or fables, fortune-telling handbooks - trace their origins to the ancient Mediterranean. In fact, some of this literature was so successful that it remained in circulation for centuries, even into the Middle Ages. Translated into other languages, these works were the best sellers of their time and remain enjoyable reading today. They are also fascinating social documents that reveal much about the daily lives, humor, loves, anxieties, fantasies, values, and beliefs of ordinary men and women.
Juvenal
In the Satires, Juvenal mocks in verse the venal behaviors common to the powerful in the Rome of his time. The Satires became a standard Latin reader for students learning that language. It has been consequently been translated into many modern language editions, both in literal and verse translations.
[compiled and translated by] Helen Waddell
"Writing excitedly to her sister Meg in 1929, Helen Waddell quotes an early review of Mediaeval Latin Lyrics: 'Miss Waddell has kept her promise well: she promised a volume of translations from those fascinating "vagantes". Some indeed are among the loveliest in any literature; and Miss Waddell has not dulled their brightness. She has come to them not merely with scholarship and literary tact, but with a soul attuned to the thought and feeling and the very idiom of another day. She has the most important of the translator's qualifications - a perfect empathy with her material.'" "Through the marvellous empathy this reviewer unerringly describes, she unlocked some of the secrets and literary achievements of the Middle Ages for the scholar and the general reader alike. The vagantes, to whom the reviewer refers, are also the subject of her earlier book, The Wandering Scholars (1927) which similarly won golden opinions. These two books and her novel Peter Abelard (1933) made her the most famous medievalist of her generation." "And this was no passion fashion. Helen Waddell's books, particularly this one, have informed and inspired generations of medievalists. Mediaeval Latin Lyrics is an authoritative and delightful guide to a period of European civilization and literature, when Latin was still a vibrant means of communication throughout the western world."--Jacket.
translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole
The first major poet of the Hebrew literary renaissance of Moslem Spain, Shmuel Ben Yosef Ha-Levi HaNagid (993-1056 C.E.) was also the prime minister of the Moslem state of Granada, battlefield commander of the non-Jewish Granada army, and one of the leading religious figures in a medieval Jewish world that stretched from Andalusia to Baghdad. Peter Cole's groundbreaking versions of HaNagid's poems capture the poet's combination of secular and religious passion, as well as his inspired linking of Hebrew and Arabic poetic practice.
Johann Peter Hebel
Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826) was one of the greatest story-tellers in the history of German literature. The anecdotes and curiosities collected here have endeared him to generations of readers in Germany and have won him many distinguished admirers further afield, including Tolstoy and Kafka, who habitually carried a copy of Hebel stories in his pocket and referred to one of them - 'Unexpected Reunion' - as 'the most wonderful story in the world'. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein recommended The Treasure Chest to his pupils when he worked as a schoolteacher, and later read from it to his friends. First issued in collected form in 1811, Hebel's stories were originally published in a popular almanach he edited for a wide and unsophisticated readership. They cover a broad spectrum of human experience with heroes ranging from Napoleon and the enlightened Austrian Emperor Joseph, to common soldiers, working men and women, servants and petty criminals. Hebel was a robust, humorous, humane and eminently sane personality whose sympathies lay with the little man and woman, whilst always being ready to recognize justice and generosity in those in power and authority. He wrote in a style close to ordinary speech and his voice carries without effort over the intervening years.