mary beard confronting the classics traditions adventures and innovations

13, 2013 3 Confronting the Classics Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations By Mary Beard (Liveright 310 pages 28.95). Mary Beard is a professor of classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the classics. If Cambridge professor Mary Beards conversation is anything like her wise and elegant book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books and New York Review of Books, 31 of which are collected in Confronting the Classics, she must be very popular indeed. How did they live? What made them laugh? What were their marriages like? This bottom-up approach to history is typical of Beard, who looks with fresh eyes at both scholarly controversies and popular interpretations of the ancient world, taking aim at many of the assumptions we held as gospel.-From publisher description. Confronting the Classics, by Mary Beard John Wilwol Sep. Challenging the notion that classical history is all about depraved emperors and conquering military heroes, Beard also introduces us to the common people-the slaves, soldiers, and women. We are taken on a guided tour of antiquity, encountering some of the most famous (and infamous) characters of classical history, among them Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Sappho and Hannibal. Here, she draws on thirty years of teaching about Greek and Roman history to provide a panoramic portrait of the classical world that draws surprising parallels with contemporary society. Mary Beard is one of the world's best-known classicists, an academic with a rare gift for communicating with a wide audience. Beard zigzags back and forth through Western culture, discussing salient episodes from classical literature, Victorian literature and contemporary political events and phenomena such as the.

Mary beard confronting the classics traditions adventures and innovations