M. S. Silk Livres

Focusing on Aristophanes' comic poetry, this critical study by Professor Silk offers fresh insights by integrating diverse theories from thinkers like Kierkegaard and Adorno. It delves into Aristophanes' self-perception as a poet and draws provocative parallels with contemporary literature, enriching the ongoing discourse on the essence and capabilities of comedy. This innovative approach not only reexamines Aristophanes' work but also contributes significantly to the broader understanding of comedic expression.

The first comprehensive study of Nietzsche's earliest book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), this important book has been revived for a new generation of readers of Nietzsche, German philosophy and history of philosophy. It is presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery and includes a specially commissioned new preface.

This path-breaking book has made an unusual and original contribution to literary theory by means of a study of the literature of ancient Greece. It investigates an aspect of poetic imagery in the practical context of Greek lyric and drama up to and including Aeschylus and Pindar. Several hundred passages are systematically examined, with many passages from English verse introduced to provide illustration. Using these, Michael Silk formulates a new critical concept, 'interaction', which characterises certain features of metaphor and other imagery and explores in detail their nature and significance. He then proceeds to discuss related issues in the fields of stylistics and literary theory, give fresh insights into several features of ancient literature, and - above all - make important contributions to the theory and practice of 'literary lexicography' in a dead language. This reissue contains a substantial new Introduction engaging with critical and scholarly developments since first publication.