Pindar the thinker’ is not a common notion in his criticism; some stubborn prejudices may account for this state of affairs, as well as misleading modern connotations of the word thinker. He was in fact one of the great minds of his day, a sophos of the first rank. This chapter explores his thought in two spheres of activity – politics and religion – and seeks to identify his unique contribution to and outlook on these topics (which were closely interrelated in Greek life). Pindar’s lavish use of gnomai (maxims) affords a convenient guide to both because Greek thought often took gnomic form, and the interpretation and adaptation of traditional wisdom were the mark of the sophos. The paper also charts Pindar’s connections with writers we tend now to label the Greek philosophers.

In the early seventeenth century in England a flurry of texts emerged formally debating the moral and ethical value of womankind. Eve, the first human to fall, was regularly used to define and malign woman, and her eating of the forbidden fruit was, for some, biblical evidence of womankind's inherent fallibility. Writers such as the horticulturalist mystics Abraham Cowley and John Evelyn increasingly reveal an Eve who is conflated both with Adam and with the garden itself. Ester Sowernam notes in Ester hath hang'd Haman: Or An Answer to a The Arraignment of Women that Eve is a Paraditian Creature. As the seventeenth century progresses, the readings shift ground, as Eve begins to become a prop in her Edenic garden for the Georgian fantasists and mystical horticulturalists of the 1650s.

Although everything we know about Ignatius Sancho’s early life comes to us from a short biographical sketch written by the lawyer Joseph Jekyll (1754–1837) as a preface to Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho: An African (1782), much of this is unsubstantiated and some appears improbable, exaggerated, or even invented. This chapter accordingly offers a critical reassessment and attempts a historical reconstruction of Jekyll’s “Life of Ignatius Sancho.” It offers a possible version of events that may explain Jekyll’s account of Sancho’s childhood journey from Cartagena to London. It argues, however, that the challenge of verifying much of “The Life” remains insurmountable at present and we can better understand “The Life” as a rhetorical intervention in the early phase of the British abolition campaign rather than as an unproblematic record of historical events. Jekyll’s “Life” may offer the reader, this chapter concludes, a moral rather than a literal truth.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book examines how early moderns linked the fate of the insistently feminised Jerusalem to that of plague-ridden London, known by the start of the seventeenth century as a metropolis, the mother city. In contrast to the definitively masculine anxiety, the book investigates the dynamics of supplication. The book argues for the degree to which the Whore of Babylon in early modern England had captivated Protestant exegetes. It demonstrates that early modern exegetes had a hard time distinguishing between a heroic woman and one who was simply 'froward', mendacious and insubordinate. The book also examines how the proscribed prayer persisted, especially among male lyricists Jonson, Constable and Verstegen. It discusses what was to be done with Catholic tropes that had infused the culture but were now officially proscribed.

This chapter speaks of Sancho’s meaning to me as a Black Briton. It is also about his general place in the pantheon of Black British figures. I write about belonging and Sancho because it is at the heart of the reason to study a life such as his. Knowing about this Black Briton and his eighteenth-century world can impact on Black lives lived in the UK today. Sancho’s legacy is his engagement with the world of his time and the mirror of that engagement in ours. Artistic, political, and domestic history is interwoven with personal views on a figure who made his compromises and his accommodations in a world not designed for him or people like him. My chapter seeks to unearth a little talked about and less known subject, which is Britain’s deep and exceptionally involved participation in the human trafficking of millions of Black people from the continent of Africa. I conclude with highlighting the positive, contemporary manifestations of interest in Sancho and his world.

Gulliver’s Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver’s adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed him to be a real person. Later commentators have variously described the work as proto-science fiction, as inspired children’s literature and as a forerunner of the modern novel. The editor’s introduction to this celebratory anniversary edition contextualises Gulliver’s Travels in Swift’s life and work as a whole while exploring its rich and remarkable afterlife. All the original illustrations and maps are included, as are the frontispiece portraits. Generous annotation explains textual details which might now seem obscure, and appendices contain additional documents and images to enhance contemporary understanding and enjoyment.

This chapter provides an examination of the documentary evidence for Charles Ignatius Sancho’s life and career as a servant in the household of the Dukes of Montagu. It is based on archive sources, with particular focus on the archive of the Duke of Buccleuch and the papers of his ancestors, John 2nd Duke of Montagu (1690–1749) and George Duke of Montagu (1712–1790).

Gulliver’s Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver’s adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed him to be a real person. Later commentators have variously described the work as proto-science fiction, as inspired children’s literature and as a forerunner of the modern novel. The editor’s introduction to this celebratory anniversary edition contextualises Gulliver’s Travels in Swift’s life and work as a whole while exploring its rich and remarkable afterlife. All the original illustrations and maps are included, as are the frontispiece portraits. Generous annotation explains textual details which might now seem obscure, and appendices contain additional documents and images to enhance contemporary understanding and enjoyment.

Pindar’s epinician odes feature narrations of mythical events and references to the realm of myth. There has been a long-standing controversy about how to understand the function of myth within, and its relevance to, these songs, with regard to both their semantic coherence and their relation to festal contexts. Starting from general observations and a brief survey of the main narrations, this chapter explores how Pindar’s use of myth can be conceived as contributing to the praise of the victor, the primary aim of the epinician genre. This investigation focuses on direct comparisons between victors and mythical figures, the victor’s genealogy and place of origin, aetiological references to the past, depictions of the mindset of heroes, metaphorical parallelisms between past and present with regard to both the victory and the odes’ performance, and the intertextual dimension. These uses of myth operate less by directly equating agonistic present and mythical past and more by implying a parallel through indirect means, in either case with the aim of situating, and thereby giving meaning to, the agonistic victory within, and often as the pinnacle of, the history of human civilization.

This chapter explores Angela Carter's engagement with and reworking of the figure of the deathly muse in the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire, two of her most influential and persistent literary models. In 'The Philosophy of Composition', Poe outlines, with specific reference to 'The Raven', the procedure by which some of his poetic works were put together. Carter's ironic restaging of the monstrous muse in the 'The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe' and 'Black Venus' engenders a process of re-composition, an exhumation of the muse that Poe wants to bury and Baudelaire wants to debase. Carter acts here as a decadent daughter, exchanging the maternal muse for a paternal muse that is at once apostrophised and subordinated in the aesthetic process. Poe and Baudelaire respectively dematerialise into dust and ashes. De-composed, the male artist/muse disappears back into the Gothic mirror.

Gulliver’s Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver’s adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed him to be a real person. Later commentators have variously described the work as proto-science fiction, as inspired children’s literature and as a forerunner of the modern novel. The editor’s introduction to this celebratory anniversary edition contextualises Gulliver’s Travels in Swift’s life and work as a whole while exploring its rich and remarkable afterlife. All the original illustrations and maps are included, as are the frontispiece portraits. Generous annotation explains textual details which might now seem obscure, and appendices contain additional documents and images to enhance contemporary understanding and enjoyment.