Brill's Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic

Brill's Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic
Author: Robert C Simms
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004360921

The epics of ancient Greece and Rome are unique in that many went unfinished, or if they were finished, remained open to further narration that was beyond the power, interest, or sometimes the life-span of the poet. Such incompleteness inaugurated a tradition of continuance and closure in their reception. Brill’s Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic explores this long tradition of continuing epics through sequels, prequels, retellings and spin-offs. This collection of essays brings together several noted scholars working in a variety of fields to trace the persistence of this literary effort from their earliest instantiations in the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer to the contemporary novels of Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood.

The Reception of the Legend of Hero and Leander

The Reception of the Legend of Hero and Leander
Author: Brian Oliver Murdoch
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2019-05-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 900440094X

This book is a study of the literary reception of the originally Greek love-story of Hero and Leander, examining the nature of the tale and demonstrating its longevity and huge popularity from classical times to the present, in a great variety of different genres. Chapters consider the classical versions (Ovid, Musaios, Martial), medieval and renaissance versions in various European languages, folk and literary ballads (and even a pop song), the lyric, dramatic versions, settings to music, burlesques and travesties in all genres, modern reflections of the story in (experimental) literary forms.

The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic

The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic
Author: Emma Greensmith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2020-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108830331

Provides the first literary and cultural-historical analysis of the most important third-century Greek epic, Quintus' Posthomerica.

Ilias Latina

Ilias Latina
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2021-10-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004469532

In Ilias Latina. Text, Interpretation, and Reception, the contributors approach this short poem, whose appeal and importance have not been sufficiently appreciated, from a multitude of scholarly perspectives. The challenging synthesis of the different issues shows that both a new edition and a modern literary interpretation of the poem are needed. Particularly focusing in various ways on the technique of vertere, the papers concern four main issues: the different elements of the narration, such as macro- and microstructure, single Bauformen and motifs, characters and scenes; the intertextual allusions to Homer and the texts of the Roman poetic tradition; the literary genre, the explicitly metaliterary passages and the implicit narrative and poetic choices; the medieval reception of the Ilias Latina.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity
Author: Christina-Panagiota Manolea
Publisher: Brill's Companions to Classica
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2021
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9789004243439

"Brill's Companion to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity presents a comprehensive account of the afterlife of the Homeric corpus. Twenty chapters written by a range of experts in the field show how Homeric poems were transmitted, disseminated, adopted, analysed, admired or even criticized across diverse intellectual environments, from the 3rd century BCE to the 6th century CE. The volume explores the impact of Homer on Hellenistic prose and poetry, the Second Sophistic, the Stoics, some Christian writers and the major Neoplatonists, showing how the Greek paideia continued to flourish in new contexts. Contributors are: Gianfranco Agosti, John Dillon, Mark Edwards, Christos Fakas, Jeffrey Fish, Luis Arturo Guichard, Malcolm Heath, Ronald E. Heine, Lawrence Kim, Robert Lamberton, Jane L. Lightfoot, Enrico Magnelli, Antony Makrinos, Diotima Papadi, Robert J. Penella, Aglae Pizzone, Ilaria Ramelli, Anne Sheppard, Georgios Tsomis, Cornelia van der Poll, Sarah Klitenic Wear"--

Building the Canon through the Classics

Building the Canon through the Classics
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2019-06-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004398031

Building the Canon through the Classics. Imitation and Variation in Renaissance Italy (1350-1580) provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the construction of a literary canon in Renaissance Italy by exploring the multiple reuses of classical authorities. The volume reshapes current debate on the notion of canon by intertwining two perspectives: analyzing when and in what form a canon emerged, and determining the ways in which an ancient literary canon interacts with the urge to bestow a similar authority on some later and contemporaneous authors. Each chapter makes an original contribution to its selected topic, but the collective strength of the volume relies on its simultaneous appeal to readers in Italian Studies, intellectual history, comparative studies and classical reception studies.

Ritual and the Poetics of Closure in Flavian Literature

Ritual and the Poetics of Closure in Flavian Literature
Author: Angeliki-Nektaria Roumpou
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2023-08-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110770482

This collection of papers responds to the question of whether a ritual at the end of a text can offer resolution and order or rather a complicated kind of closure. It reveals that ritual can bring but also can thwart closure by alluding to new beginnings. A ritual could be a perfect kind of ending but it hardly ever seems to be. In Flavian literature this is even more apparent because of the complicated political background under which these texts were produced. Ancient religious practices in the closing sections of Flavian texts help us create connections between endings and (new) beginnings, order and disorder, binding and loosening, structure and dissolution which reflects the structure of the Empire in Flavian Rome. Overall, this volume offers a new tool for studying literary endings through ritual, which promotes our understanding of Flavian culture and politics as well as creating a new perception of the use of religion and ritual in Flavian literature: instead of giving a sense of closure, this volume argues that ritual is a medium to increase complexity, to expose ritual actors and to project a generic riskiness of ritual actors also onto the epic actors who are acting before and mostly after a ritual scene.

Classical Scholarship and Its History

Classical Scholarship and Its History
Author: Stephen Harrison
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110719320

It is unusual for a single scholar practically to reorient an entire sub-field of study, but this is what Chris Stray has done for the history of UK classical scholarship. His remarkable combination of interests in the sociology of scholars and scholarship, in the history of the book and of publishing, and (especially) in the detailed intellectual contextualisation of classical scholarship as a form of classical reception has fundamentally changed the way the history of British classics and its study is viewed. A generation ago the history of classical scholarship still consisted largely of accounts of particular scholars and groups of scholars written by other scholars from a broadly biographical and ‘heroic individual’ perspective. In these works scholars often sought to find their own place in the great tradition, choosing to praise or blame those whose work they admired or deprecated, and to identify with particular schools or trends, and there were few attempts to provide a broader and less prosopographical perspective. Almost all the chapters in the volume originated as papers at a conference in honour of the honorand, and have been improved both by discussion there and by the rigorous peer-review process conducted by the two experienced editors. It covers various aspects of classical reception, with a particular focus on the history of scholars, their institutions, and their writings; the main focus is on the UK, but there are also substantial engagements with continental Europe and (especially) the USA; the period covered runs from the Renaissance to the present. The cast contains a number of world-famous names. Unusually, the volume also contains an essay by the honorand, but we are very keen to include this, especially as it focusses on the topic of scholarly collaboration.

Markers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry

Markers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry
Author: Thomas J. Nelson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 459
Release: 2023-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009085905

Challenging many established narratives of literary history, this book investigates how the earliest known Greek poets (seventh to fifth centuries BCE) signposted their debts to their predecessors and prior traditions – placing markers in their works for audiences to recognise (much like the 'Easter eggs' of modern cinema). Within antiquity, such signposting has often been considered the preserve of later literary cultures, closely linked with the development of libraries, literacy and writing. In this wide-ranging new study, Thomas Nelson shows that these devices were already deeply ingrained in oral archaic Greek poetry, deconstructing the artificial boundary between a supposedly 'primal' archaic literature and a supposedly 'sophisticated' book culture of Hellenistic Alexandria and Rome. In three interlocking case studies, he highlights how poets from Homer to Pindar employed the language of hearsay, memory and time to index their allusive relationships, as they variously embraced, reworked and challenged their inherited tradition.