Offering unparalleled scope, A Companion to Hellenistic Literature in 30 newly commissioned essays explores the social and intellectual contexts of literature production in the Hellenistic period, and
In this wide-ranging survey of ancient Greek narrative from archaic epic to classical prose, Alex Purves shows how stories unfold in space as well as in time. She traces a shift in authorial perspective, from a godlike overview to the more focused outlook of human beings caught up in a developing plot, inspired by advances in cartography, travel, and geometry. Her analysis of the temporal and spatial dimensions of ancient narrative leads to new interpretations of important texts by Homer, Herodotus, and Xenophon, among others, showing previously unnoticed connections between epic and prose. Drawing on the methods of classical philology, narrative theory, and cultural geography, Purves recovers a poetics of spatial representation that lies at the core of the Greeks' conception of their plots.
Ancient Greeks remembered their past before the rise of historiography and after it poetry and oratory continued to serve commemorative functions. This book explores the field of literary memory in the fifth century BCE, juxtaposing the works of Herodotus and Thucydides with samples from epinician poetry, elegy, tragedy and oratory. Various socio-political contexts and narrative forms lent themselves to the expression of diverse attitudes towards the past. At the same time, a common gravitational centre can be observed which is distinct from modern ideas of history. As well as presenting a broad overview on memory in various genres, Professor Grethlein sheds new light on the rise of Greek historiography. He views Herodotus and Thucydides against the background of memory in poetry and oratory and thereby elucidates the tension between tradition and continuity in which the shaping of historiography as a genre took place.
This landmark contribution to ongoing debates about perceptions of the Jews in antiquity examines the attitudes of Greek writers of the Hellenistic period toward the Jewish people. Among the leading G
Sir Charles Willink’s work on Greek tragedy and metre is among the most important of the last fifty years. This volume collects all his mature papers, including three new articles on Euripides and add
The iconoclast of Classics, Page duBois refuses to act as border patrol for a sometimes fiercely protected traditional discipline. Instead, she incorporates insights from postcolonial, psychoanalytic,
Contemporary translation studies have explored translation not as a means of recovering a source text, but as a process of interpretation and production of literary meaning and value. Translation and
With its focus on 'reasoning through imagery' this book applies aspects of cognitive psychology to a study of key tragic props in order to draw connections between visual imagery and the spectators' i
Forms of Astonishment sets out to interpret a number of Greek myths about the transformations of humans and gods. Such tales have become familiar in their Ovidian dress, as in the best-selling transla
Myths are not simple narrative plots. In ancient Greece, as in other traditional societies, these tales existed only in the poetic or artistic forms in which they were set down. To read them from an anthropological point of view means to study their meaning according to their forms of expression - epic recitation, ritual celebration of the victory of an athlete, tragic performance, erudite Alexandrian poetry, antiquarian prose text; in other words, to study the functions of Greek myths in their permanent retelling and reshaping. Falling between social reality and cultural fiction, Greek myths were evolving creations, constantly adapting themselves to new conditions of performance. Using myths such as those of Persephone, Bellerophon, Helen and Teiresias, Claude Calame presents an overview of Greek mythology as a category inseparable from the literature in which so much of it is found. The French edition of this book was first published in 2000.
This book investigates one of the most characteristic and prominent features of ancient Greek literature - the scene of debate or agon, in which with varying degrees of formality characters square up
Sophocles’ Theban Plays— Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone—lie at the core of the Western literary canon. They are extensively translated, universally taught, and frequently performed
Sophocles’ Theban Plays— Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone—lie at the core of the Western literary canon. They are extensively translated, universally taught, and frequently performed
Night's Black Agents offers an introduction to the world of witches and wizards in Greek and Roman antiquity, and to the ghosts of the dead that were often associated with them. In its pages Daniel O
This seventh volume on Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece and Rome presents a series of essays that explore the workings of memory in ancient texts and artworks marking the shift over centuries fr
This is the first comprehensive account of the life and work of the distinguished scholar and public figure Gilbert Murray (1866-1957). Sixteen contributors survey his childhood, his work in the thea
Writing to a friend, Horace describes the man as fascinated by "the discordant harmony of the cosmos, its purpose and power." Andrew Scholtz takes this notion of "discordant harmony" and argues for it
Examining the profusion of ways in which the arts, culture, and thought of Greece and Rome have been transmitted, interpreted, adapted and used, A Companion to Classical Receptions explores the impact
The principle of formular economy is to protect an oral poet's thesaurus of formulas against overload through the avoidance of metrical doublets. Being specific to oral poetry, it serves as the chief
