Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
250 years ago, Ji Yun compiled one of the world’s largest premodern encyclopedias for the Chinese court. This fall Oxford University Press launches the first endowed bilingual translation library of Classical Chinese Literature thanks to a generous gift by Ji Yun’s descendant, Agnes Hsin-mei Hsu-Tang and her husband Oscar Tang.
David Herd explores the language of human rights and why Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s recent pronouncement of human rights as a “luxury belief” is a shocking step even by the standards of contemporary political rhetoric.
This year marks 400 years since the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, but why was he singled out for his lack of knowledge about classics, as well as his “illiteracy”?
Today, translation is a professionalized activity closely linked to the publishing industry. For most of the nineteenth century, however, this organized chain of production had yet to be established.
“There is no ideal, ultimate translation of a given original. Classic texts in particular, from Homer onwards, are susceptible of multiple readings and retranslations over time.” Brian Nelson discusses translations of classic works and the difficulties with translating Proust in particular.
The books people remember most are often the ones from their childhoods, and it’s no surprise; many children’s books have survived decades of changing tastes and digital distractions, continuing to entertain generations of children and even adult readers.
Damien B. Schlarb discusses how “Melville’s wisdom,” the version of moral philosophy Herman Melville crafts in his fiction through his engagement with biblical wisdom literature, may help us confront our own moment of informational inundation and uncertainty.
There is a network of intertextual links between Walter Scott and James Joyce. Richard Barlow teases out some of the allusions and references to Scott and his work in Joyce’s texts, comparing the different visions of history offered by these two writers.
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has declared a focus for 2023 on sustainability, well-being, and community.
Try this short quiz to test your knowledge and learn more about famous twentieth-century texts!
The gargantuan task of the fight against climate change needs practical know-how and political militancy. It also requires a clear sense of its wider goals. Robert Spencer explores how “forest literature” can help us to formulate new ways of inhabiting the living world.
The addition to Electronic Enlightenment of nearly 500 letters from the Beaumarchais correspondence is a significant event in eighteenth-century studies.
The idea that Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues entirely lacked the philosophical bite or intellectual depth of Plato’s had become a commonplace in a philosophical discourse which prioritised abstract knowledge over broader ethics. Dr Carol Atack makes the case for Xenophon’s kinder Socrates.
A novel about a female composer struggling with depression after the birth of her child does not, on the face of it, seem to have much to do with war or peace in Northern Ireland. But appearances can be deceiving.
The world is literally on fire; authoritarianism threatens multiple countries; racism and xenophobia are rampant; women’s and LGBTQ rights are under threat—why on earth would anyone spend time reading a 3,000-page novel by a man who’s been dead (exactly) a hundred years?
Possibly the most dangerous play William Shakespeare wrote was The Tragedie of Macbeth. The drama is packed with illegality: assassination of kings; prophecies about kings; supernatural women; and necromancy. To add to the danger, Shakespeare’s employer, King James, was a prickly patron of the performing arts and notorious for his sensitivity to slights, real and perceived. […]