Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond

Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond
Author: Lilah Grace Canevaro
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2019-12-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1910589918

Here a team of established scholars offers new perspectives on poetic texts of wisdom, learning and teaching related to the great line of Greek and Latin poems descended from Hesiod. In previous scholarship, a drive to classify Greek and Latin didactic poetry has engaged with the near-total absence in ancient literary criticism of explicit discussion of didactic as a discrete genre. The present volume approaches didactic poetry from different perspectives: the diachronic, mapping the development of didactic through changing social and political landscapes (from Homer and Hesiod to Neo-Latin didactic); and the comparative, setting the Graeco-Roman tradition against a wider backdrop (including ancient near-eastern and contemporary African traditions). The issues raised include knowledge in its relation to power; the cognitive strategies of the didactic text; ethics and poetics; the interplay of obscurity and clarity, playfulness and solemnity; the authority of the teacher.

Ancient Roman Literary Gardens

Ancient Roman Literary Gardens
Author: K. Sara Myers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2024
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197773206

"Beginning with Cicero and Varro and ending with Statius and Pliny the Younger, this chapter offers a chronological investigation of the ways in which real and literary gardens developed from the first century BCE to the first century CE as a means of elite masculine self-representation and the reactions of elite Roman men to the increased social and cultural power of villa and horti estates and their grounds. Gardens served as powerful symbols of wealth and as creative displays of the cultural aspirations of their owners in ways that challenged traditional definitions of gardens and of Roman manliness. Since these large-scale 'gardens' are primarily associated with leisure (otium), authors are concerned with describing and justifying their activities in these sites as befitting Roman masculine ideals. We can trace a change in attitude towards leisure and the private display of wealth, and consequently gardens, largely attributed to changes in the socio-political circumstances of the Roman elite, in the works of Statius and his contemporary Pliny the Younger, who use laudatory descriptions of extensive villas and grounds as a means of expressing social and literary power"--

Approaches to Lucretius

Approaches to Lucretius
Author: Donncha O'Rourke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2020-07-16
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1108386458

Both in antiquity and ever since the Renaissance Lucretius' De Rerum Natura has been admired – and condemned – for its startling poetry, its evangelical faith in materialist causation, and its seductive advocacy of the Epicurean good life. Approaches to Lucretius assembles an international team of classicists and philosophers to take stock of a range of critical approaches to which this influential poem has given rise and which in turn have shaped its interpretation, including textual criticism, the text's strategies for engaging the reader with its author and his message, the 'atomology' that posits a correlation of the letters of the poem with the atoms of the universe, the literary and philosophical intertexts that mediate the poem, and the political and ideological questions that it raises. Thirteen essays take up a variety of positions within these traditions of interpretation, innovating within them and advancing beyond them in new directions.

The Greek Anthology (Classic Reprint)

The Greek Anthology (Classic Reprint)
Author: Neaves Neaves
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2017-02
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780243239726

Excerpt from The Greek Anthology Nearest to him in claims Of antiquity, even if we grant that his style is less interesting, and his matter not so attractive. Indeed one argument for including Hesiod in the series of Ancient Classics for English Readers may be found in the fact that nine out of twelve stu dents finish their classical course with but the vaguest acquaintance with his remains. Such, therefore, ought to be' as thankful as the unlearned for an idea of what he actually or probably wrote. And it is this which the larger portion of this volume endeavours to supply. The poet's life has been compiled from ancient and modern biographies with a constant eye to the internal evidence of his extant poetry, for which the editions of Paley, Goettling, and Dubner, have been chiefly studied. For illustrative quotation, use has been chiefly made of the English versions of Elton, good for the most part, and, as regards the Theogony, almost Miltonic. For the Works and. Days, ' the little - known version Of the Elizabethan George Chapman - a biographical rarity made accessible by Mr Hooper's edition in J. R. Smith's Library of Old Authors - has been here and there pressed into our service. A parallel or two to Hesiod's Shield Of Hercules, ' from Homer's Shield of Achilles, belong to an unpublished version by Mr Richard Garnett. But to no student of Hesiod are so many thanks due as to Mr F. A. Paley, whose notes have been of the utmost use, as the most successful attempt to unravel Hesiodic. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Classics and Irish Politics, 1916-2016

Classics and Irish Politics, 1916-2016
Author: Isabelle Torrance
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2020-08-06
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0198864485

This interdisciplinary collection, written by experts in their fields, addresses how models from ancient Greece and Rome have permeated Irish political discourse in the century since 1916. Topics covered include the reception and rejection of classical culture in Ireland; and the politics of Irish language engagement with Greek and Roman models.

Wisdom Discourse in the Ancient World

Wisdom Discourse in the Ancient World
Author: Sara De Martin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2024-10-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1040128114

This book moves beyond the debate on ‘wisdom literature’, ongoing in biblical studies, to demonstrate the productivity of ‘wisdom’ as a literary category. Featuring work by scholars of Egyptology, classics, biblical and Near Eastern studies, it offers fresh perspectives on what makes a text ‘wisdom’. This interdisciplinary volume widens the scope of the investigation into ‘wisdom literature’, chronologically, geographically, and methodologically. Readers are given insights into how the label ‘wisdom’ contributes to our understanding of diverse literary forms across time periods and cultural contexts. In the volume’s introduction, the editors consider ‘wisdom’ as a ‘discourse’, shifting the focus from the debate on whether ‘wisdom literature’ is a genre to the properties of the texts, namely exploring what makes a text ‘wisdom’. This offers a methodological backdrop against which the diverse approaches of the single authors productively coexist, showing how different methodologies can be integrated to reframe our conceptions of ancient literary genres. The chapters in this volume examine texts that are the products of different ancient cultures, with several of them bridging diverse cultural, social, and chronological contexts. By sampling how different methodologies interact both within individual interpretative efforts and in wider attempts to understand cross-cultural literary phenomena, this volume also contributes new perspectives to the scholarship on ancient literary genres. Wisdom Discourse in the Ancient World will interest both students and scholars of the ancient Near East, Egyptology, classical studies, biblical studies, and theology and religious studies, particularly those working on wisdom literature in antiquity. It will also appeal to readers with an interest in comparative approaches and genre studies more broadly.

Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher

Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher
Author: Gareth Williams
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2022
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0197610331

"This volume contains sixteen essays on various aspects of Ovid's engagement with philosophical trends and topics. Ovid has long been celebrated for the versatility of his poetic imagination, the diversity of his generic experimentation throughout his long career, and his intimate engagement with the Greco-Roman literary tradition that precedes him; but what of his engagement with the philosophical tradition? Ovid's close familiarity with philosophical ideas and with specific philosophical texts has long been recognized, perhaps most prominently in the Pythagorean, Platonic, Empedoclean, and Lucretian shades that color his Metamorphoses. This philosophical component, however, has often been perceived as a feature subordinate to Ovid's larger literary agenda; and because of the controlling influence conceded to that literary impulse, readings of the philosophical dimension have often focused on the perceived distortion, ironizing, or parodying of philosophical sources and ideas. This book counters this tendency by (i) considering Ovid's seriousness of engagement with, and his possible critique of, the philosophical writings that inform his works; (ii) questioning the feasibility of separating out the categories of the "philosophical" and the "literary" in the first place; (iii) exploring the ways in which Ovid may offer unusual, controversial, or provocative reactions to received philosophical ideas; and (iv) investigating the case to be made for viewing the Ovidian corpus not just as a body of writings that are often philosophically inflected, but also as texts that may themselves be read as philosophically adventurous and experimental"--

A Literary History of Latin & English Poetry

A Literary History of Latin & English Poetry
Author: Victoria Moul
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2022-07-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108135579

Victoria Moul's groundbreaking study uncovers one of the most important features of early modern English poetry: its bilingualism. The first guide to a forgotten literary landscape, this book considers the vast quantities of poetry that were written and read in both Latin and English from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Introducing readers to a host of new authors and drawing on hundreds of manuscript as well as print sources, it also reinterprets a series of landmarks in English poetry within a bilingual literary context. Ranging from Tottel's miscellany to the hymns of Isaac Watts, via Shakespeare, Jonson, Herbert, Marvell, Milton and Cowley, this revelatory survey shows how the forms and fashions of contemporary Latin verse informed key developments in English poetry. As the complex, highly creative interactions between the two languages are revealed, the work reshapes our understanding of what 'English' literary history means.