Böcker av Jan H. Blits

The essays in this book examine the political activities and institutions of pre-Imperial Rome in conjunction with the habits of the hearts and the minds of the Romans. Relying on the writings of ancient authors, the essays analyze significant political developments and events. They attempt to draw out the meaning of what the authors say and impose no theory on the ancient writings. Nor do they pursue the methodological techniques of contemporary historiography. While avoiding such common present-day anachronisms, they take their guidance directly from the ancient historians themselves and examine their understanding of Rome's political history and culture. Harking back to the ancient view that a political culture or regime is both a city's form of government and its way of life, the essays, trying to be true to the full character of Roman political life, seek to understand the political activities and the souls of the Romans, and to understand each in the light of the other.

Rome and the Spirit of Caesar, providing a fresh interpretation of Julius Caesar, is a thorough examination of Shakespeare's presentation of the final throes of republican Rome's political decay and demise and the rise of Caesarism. As in his previous studies of Shakespeare's plays, Blits, pursuing his distinctive approach, follows Caesar through, scene by scene, speech by speech, line by line, reaching his conclusions by closely examining Shakespeare's text. Approaching the play as a coherent whole, he examines the whole in the light of its parts and the parts in the light of the whole. Since each presupposes the other, he considers the whole and its parts together. He carefully relates the play's details to its major themes and grounds the themes in, and supports them by, the details.While intruding no literary theory on the play, Blits brings out the historical and perennial political substance that Shakespeare deliberately put into it. He shows that Caesar is a work of historical poetry, shaped by Shakespeare's mastery of the Roman histories and the Hellenistic philosophies bearing directly on his subject. Topics include the love of honor and fame, heroic ambition and glory, virtue and honor, civic strife, political murder, the role of political oratory, public versus private interests, Caesarism, the decay of liberty, loyalty, demagoguery, luxury, spiritedness, superstition, Stoicism and Epicureanism, manliness, friendship, moral intimidation, political imprudence, foreign and civil war, universal empire, and the advent of Christianity.

Patterned after his previous books on Shakespeare's plays, Jan H. Blits's New Heaven, New Earth is a scene-by-scene, line-by-line philosophical study of Antony and Cleopatra. Combining close attention to detail with interpretive breadth, Blits approaches Shakespeare as a first-rank thinker who, master of his own thought and writing, produced plays and poetry with an infinitely conscious art, like any commonly recognized philosophical poet. Treating the play as a fully coherent whole, Blits shows that Antony and Cleopatra, as much a history play as a love story, depicts the transition from the pagan to the Christian world_from the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Republic and the decline of the pagan gods to the emergence of the Roman Empire and the conditions giving rise to Christianity. Instead of being organized thematically, New Heaven, New Earth follows the play from beginning to end, closely examining Shakespeare's text on its own terms and not on the terms of modern literary theory. Using this approach, Blits draws significant and insightful conclusions that will satisfy the interests of scholars of politics, literature, and history alike.

While some criticism of "Julius Caesar" has stressed the corruption of the common people and the Republic's enemies within the patrician class, this book argues that at the core of the play lies the less obvious, but more important, corruption of the regime's leading defenders, particularly Brutus.

Spirit, Soul, and City offers a new reading of Coriolanus, Shakespeare's most political play and the last of his great tragedies. Portraying the founding of the Roman republic and the life and soul of its legendary warrior, Coriolanus, the play brings to light not only the hidden working of Rome's mixed regime but the inherent tragic tensions in the soul's spirited tendency to strive to go beyond itself in order to be true to itself. Distinguished scholar Jan H. Blits provides a fresh interpretation of this rich, complex, and often perplexing play, combining meticulous detail and insightful breadth. Proceeding line-by-line through the play, this book reaches its conclusions by closely examining Shakespeare's text-his plot, characters, language, structure, allusions, puzzles, and other devices.