Microcosmographia AcademicaOvvero una guida per il giovane politico accademico. E-book. Formato EPUB Francis Macdonald Cornford   -  Ronzani Editore, 2021  - 

a cura di Luisa AntoniolliMicrocosmographia Academica, di F.M. Cornford, storico della filosofia e filologo classico dell’Università di Cambridge, è una narrazione intelligente, ironica, disincantata e divertita della vita accademica di quell’Università fra la fine dell’800 e l’inizio del ’900. Il libro ironizza su un mondo caratterizzato da conservatorismo e intrinseca inerzia, scettico e incapace di riforma, mosso soprattutto dal pregiudizio, dalla paura e dall’avidità. Il capolavoro di Cornford sta nel riuscire a trasformare un tema in sé ristretto e polveroso in una commedia leggera e divertente, svelandoci dinamiche peculiari, ma anche sempre uguali in ogni luogo e ogni tempo, mosse dagli stessi impulsi e sabotate dagli stessi difetti. L’universalità e l’attualità dei contenuti permettono a questo libro di mantenere, a distanza di oltre un secolo, tutto il suo interesse, e di presentarsi al pubblico con intatta freschezza, in questa prima edizione italiana.Le illustrazioni del libro riproducono alcune xilografie di Gwen Raverat (1885-1957), artista di Cambridge, nipote di Charles Darwin, e cugina di Frances Darwin, poetessa che nel 1909 sposò Francis M. Cornford. Nota soprattutto per i suoi lavori di incisione, fu attiva anche come designer teatrale, illustratrice di libri e critica d’arte. Fu fra i fondatori della Society of Wood Engravers inglese.

Thucydides Mythistoricus. E-book. Formato PDF Francis Macdonald Cornford   -  Forgotten Books, 2017  - 

The title of this book needs a word of explanation, if not of apology; for to any one who is accustomed to think of Thucydides as typically prosaic, and nothing if not purely historical, the epithet Mythistoricus may seem to carry a note of challenge, or even of paradox. But the sense in which the expression has here been used is quite consistent with the historian's much-talked-of 'trustworthiness', and, indeed, with the literal truth of every statement of fact in the whole of his work. It is possible, however, even for a writer of history, to be something much better than trustworthy. Xenophon, I suppose, is honest; but his honesty makes it none the easier to read him. To read Thucydides is, although certainly not easy, at any rate pleasant, because — trustworthiness and all — he is a great artist. It is the object of this essay to bring out an essentially artistic aspect of his work, which has escaped notice, partly because the history is so long that it is hard to take it in as a whole, and partly because the execution of the effect is imperfect, having been hindered by the good intentions with which Thucydides set out.The history, as it stands, is the product of two hardly compatible designs. It was originally planned as a textbook of strategy and politics in the form of a journal; and it is commonly taken to be actually nothing more.

The Origin of Attic Comedy. E-book. Formato PDF Francis Macdonald Cornford   -  Forgotten Books, 2017  - 

Aristotle observes that at the date from which the record of comic poets begins, Attic Comedy had already 'certain definite forms.' The hypothesis put forward in this book is that these traditional 'forms,' still clearly traceable in the constant features of the Aristophanic play, were inherited from a ritual drama, the content of which can be reconstructed. Chapters II to VII contain the argument for this theory, and Chapter IX deals with the paradox (if paradox it be) that the ritual drama lying behind Comedy proves to be essentially of the same type as that in which Professor Gilbert Murray has sought the origin of Tragedy.I was not myself prepared for any such conclusion. This book was planned, and part of it (now cancelled) was even written, while I still accepted the current view that Aristophanic Comedy is a patchwork of elements loosely pieced together, and in origin possibly foreign to one another. A closer study of the eleven plays convinced me that this opinion was almost wholly mistaken. The plays, under all their variety and extravagance, have not only a unity of structure, but a framework of traditional incidents, which cannot, I believe, be otherwise explained than as the surviving fabric of a ritual plot. The hypothesis was thus forced upon me by the facts; but very probably it would never have occurred to me, if I had not had in my mind Professor Murray's theory of the 'ritual forms' in Tragedy. My debt to him is, therefore, great. The dedication marks my sense of it, as well as my gratitude for all that I have learnt from his imaginative and delicate interpretation of Greek poetry.Among earlier writers, I owe most to Zielinski, whose Gliederung der altattischen Komodie contained the first serious effort to account for the unique structure of the Old Comedy.