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Chapter 2 - The Gift in Classical Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2019

Lars Kjær
Affiliation:
New College of the Humanities
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Summary

This chapter explores the idea of the gift found in the classical writers and philosophers most widely read in central medieval Europe. It explores the explicit philosophical and moral treatments of generosity found in Seneca’s De beneficiis and Cicero’s De officiis, as well as the role played by gifts in literature, from Virgil’s Aeneid to the poems of Ovid. The chapter concludes by looking at how classical ideas about generosity were taken up by early Christian writers.

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Chapter
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The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition
Ideals and the Performance of Generosity in Medieval England, 1100–1300
, pp. 14 - 41
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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