Hellenistic Studies at a Crossroads

Hellenistic Studies at a Crossroads
Author: Richard Hunter
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110368137

This volume is a collection of fifteen papers written by a team of international experts in the field of Hellenistic literature. In an attempt to reassess methods such as the detection of intertextual allusions or the general notion of neoteric poetics, the authors combine current critical trends (narratology, genre-theory, aesthetics, cultural studies) with a close reading of Hellenistic texts. Contributions address a wealth of topics in a variety of texts which include not only poems by the major Alexandrians but also prose works, epigrams, epigraphic material and scholia. Perspectives range from linguistic analysis to interdisciplinary studies, whereas post-classical literature is also seen against the background of the cultural and ideological contexts of the era. Besides reviewing preconceptions of Hellenistic scholarship, this volume aims at providing fresh insights into Hellenistic literature and aesthetics.

Euhemerism and Its Uses

Euhemerism and Its Uses
Author: Syrithe Pugh
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2021-03-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000356582

The first interdisciplinary study of the long history of an important phenomenon in European intellectual and cultural history / Fills an important gap in the history of ideas / Will appeal to scholars and students of classical reception, mediaeval and Renaissance literature, historiography, and theories of myth and religion

Beyond Alexandria

Beyond Alexandria
Author: Marijn S. Visscher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0190059109

Beyond Alexandria aims to provide a better understanding of Seleucid literature, covering the period from Seleucus I to Antiochus III. Despite the historical importance of the Seleucid Empire during the long third century BCE, little attention has been devoted to its literature. The works of authors affiliated with the Seleucid court have tended to be overshadowed by works coming out of Alexandria, emerging from the court of the Ptolemies, the main rivals of the Seleucids. This book makes two key points, both of which challenge the idea that "Alexandrian" literature is coterminous with Hellenistic literature as a whole. First, the book sets out to demonstrate that a distinctly strand of writing emerged from the Seleucid court, characterized by shared perspectives and thematic concerns. Second, Beyond Alexandria explores how Seleucid literature was significant on the wider Hellenistic stage. Specifically, it shows that the works of Seleucid authors influenced and provided counterpoints to writers based in Alexandria, including key figures such as Eratosthenes and Callimachus. For this reason, the literature of the Seleucids is not only interesting in its own right; it also provides an important entry point for furthering our understanding of Hellenistic literature in general.

The Epigraphy of Ptolemaic Egypt

The Epigraphy of Ptolemaic Egypt
Author: Alan Bowman
Publisher: Oxford Studies in Ancient Docu
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198858221

This collection of detailed studies of the epigraphical landscape of Ptolemaic Egypt explores the historical and cultural contexts of the surviving Greek and Greek/Egyptian bilingual and trilingual inscriptions as a complement to the Corpus of Ptolemaic Inscriptions edition, in which the texts will be presented together for the first time.

Structures of Epic Poetry

Structures of Epic Poetry
Author: Christiane Reitz
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 2756
Release: 2019-12-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110492598

This compendium (4 vols.) studies the continuity, flexibility, and variation of structural elements in epic narratives. It provides an overview of the structural patterns of epic poetry by means of a standardized, stringent terminology. Both diachronic developments and changes within individual epics are scrutinized in order to provide a comprehensive structural approach and a key to intra- and intertextual characteristics of ancient epic poetry.

The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod

The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod
Author: Alexander Loney
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 611
Release: 2018-07-26
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0190905360

This volume brings together 29 junior and senior scholars to discuss aspects of Hesiod's poetry and its milieu and to explore questions of reception over two and half millennia from shortly after the poems' conception to Twitter hashtags. Rather than an exhaustive study of Hesiodic themes, the Handbook is conceived as a guide through terrain, some familiar, other less charted, examining both Hesiodic craft and later engagements with Hesiod's stories of the gods and moralizing proscriptions of just human behavior. The volume opens with the "Hesiodic Question," to address questions of authorship, historicity, and the nature of composition of Hesiod's two major poems, the Theogony and Works and Days. Subsequent chapters on the archaeology and economic history of archaic Boiotia, Indo-European poetics, and Hesiodic style offer a critical picture of the sorts of questions that have been asked rather than an attempt to resolve debate. Other chapters discuss Hesiod's particular rendering of the supernatural and the performative nature of the Works and Days, as well as competing diachronic and synchronic temporalities and varying portrayals of female in the two poems. The rich story of reception ranges from Solon to comic books. These chapters continue to explore the nature of Hesiod's poetics, as different writers through time single out new aspects of his art less evident to earlier readers. Long before the advent of Christianity, classical writers leveled their criticism at Hesiod's version of polytheism. The relative importance of Hesiod's two major poems across time also tells us a tale of the age receiving the poems. In the past two centuries, artists and writers have come to embrace the Hesiodic stories for themselves for the insight they offer of the human condition but even as old allegory looks quaint to modern eyes new forms of allegory take form.

Brill's Companion to Theocritus

Brill's Companion to Theocritus
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 852
Release: 2021-08-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004466711

Brill's Companion to Theocritus offers an up-to-date guide to a thorough understanding of Theocritus’ literary output. Exploring his corpus from a variety of novel perspectives, it presents a detailed account of the intricacy of Theocritus’ poetic art.

Greek Epigram from the Hellenistic to the Early Byzantine Era

Greek Epigram from the Hellenistic to the Early Byzantine Era
Author: Maria Kanellou
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2019-04-18
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0192573799

Greek epigram is a remarkable poetic form. The briefest of all ancient Greek genres, it is also the most resilient: for almost a thousand years it attracted some of the finest Greek poetic talents as well as exerting a profound influence on Latin literature, and it continues to inspire and influence modern translations and imitations. After a long period of neglect, research on epigram has surged during recent decades, and this volume draws on the fruits of that renewed scholarly engagement. It is concerned not with the work of individual authors or anthologies, but with the complexities of epigram as a genre, and provides a selection of in-depth treatments of key aspects of Greek literary epigram of the Hellenistic, Roman, and early Byzantine periods. Individual chapters offer insights into a variety of topics, from the dynamic interactions between poets and their predecessors and contemporaries, and the relationship between epigram and its sociopolitical, cultural, and literary background from the third century BCE up until the sixth century CE, to its interaction with its origins, inscribed epigram more generally, other literary genres, the visual arts, and Latin poetry, as well as the process of editing and compilation that generated the collections that survived into the modern world. Through the medium of individual studies the volume as a whole seeks to offer a sense of this vibrant and dynamic poetic form and its world, which will be of value to scholars and students of Greek epigram and classical literature more broadly.

Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem
Author: Robert A. Rohland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2022-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009040987

Carpe diem – 'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!' – is a prominent motif throughout ancient literature and beyond. This is the first book-length examination of its significance and demonstrates that close analysis can make a key contribution to a question that is central to literary studies in and beyond Classics: how can poetry give us the almost magical impression that something is happening here and now? In attempting an answer, Robert Rohland gives equal attention to Greek and Latin texts, as he offers new interpretations of well-known poems from Horace and tackles understudied epigrams. Pairing close readings of ancient texts along with interpretations of other forms of cultural production such as gems, cups, calendars, monuments, and Roman wine labels, this interdisciplinary study transforms our understanding of the motif of carpe diem.