Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval : oso

How to Read a Latin Poem

William Fitzgerald — 2013-05-23

Author:: William Fitzgerald
ISBN:: 9780199657865
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199657865.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

Latin is very much alive in the poetry written by the great Latin poets, and this book is about their poetry, their language, and their culture. This book shows the reader with little or no knowledge of the Latin language how it works as a unique vehicle for poetic expression and thought. Moving between close analysis of particular Latin poems and more general discussions of Latin poets, literature, and society, the book gives the un-Latined reader an insider's view of how Latin poetry feels and what makes it worth reading, even today. This book explores what can be said and done in a poetry and a language that are both very different from English and yet have profoundly influenced it. It takes the reader through the whole range of Latin poetry from the trivial, obscene, and vicious, to the sublime, the passionate, and the uplifting. Individual chapters focus on particular authors (such as Vergil and Horace) or on themes (love, hate, civil war), and together they explain why we should care about what the poets of ancient Rome had to say.

Gendering Time in Augustan Love Elegy

Hunter H. Gardner — 2013-05-23

Author:: Hunter H. Gardner
ISBN:: 9780199652396
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199652396.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

This project examines how and why time is gendered in Latin love elegy, so that it appears to affect men and women differently. Drawing on recent efforts to situate the elegies of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid in their social and political milieu, the book considers the genre’s brief flowering during the Augustan Principate. Part one argues that imperatives of the new regime, encouraging a younger generation of loyalists to participate in the machinery of government, put temporal pressures on the elite male that shape the amator’s (or “poet-lover’s”) resistance to entering a course of civil service and prompt his withdrawal into the arms of a courtesan, and therefore unmarriageable, beloved. Part two of the book examines the divergent temporal experiences of the amator and his beloved puella (“girl”) through the lens of “women’s time” (le temps des femmes) and the chora as theorized by psycholinguist Julia Kristeva. Kristeva’s model of feminine subjectivity as defined by repetition, cyclicality, and eternity allows us to understand better how the beloved’s marginalization from the realm of historical time proves advantageous to her amator wishing to defer entrance into civic life. The antithesis between the properties of “women’s time” and the linear momentum that defines masculine subjectivity, moreover, demonstrates how “women’s time” ultimately thwarts the amator’s often promised generic evolution.

Days Linked by Song

Gerard O'Daly — 2012-09-20

Author:: Gerard O'Daly
ISBN:: 9780199263950
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263950.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Prudentius is arguably the greatest Latin poet of late antiquity. This book provides the Latin text, a new English verse translation, and critical reviews on each of his twelve lyric poems, the Cathemerinon, Poems for the Day, which were published early in the fifth century ad. They reflect the religious concerns of the increasingly Christianized western Roman Empire in the age of the emperor Theodosius and Ambrose of Milan, but they are above all the writings of a private person, and of the ways in which his religious beliefs colour his everyday life. Several of these poems follow the day's course, from pre-dawn to mealtime and nightfall. Others celebrate Christ's miracles, cult of the dead, and the feasts of Christmas and Epiphany. They are rich in biblical themes and narratives, images and symbols. But they are written in the classical metres of Latin poetry, use its vocabulary and metaphors, and exploit its themes as much as those of the Bible. They achieve a remarkable creative tension between the two worlds that determined Prudentius' culture: the beliefs and practices, sacred books and doctrines of Christianity, and the traditions, poetry, and ideas of the Greeks and Romans. A good part of the attractiveness of these poems comes from the interplay in Prudentius' reception of these two worlds.

Virgil's Schoolboys

Andrew Wallace — 2011-01-01

Author:: Andrew Wallace
ISBN:: 9780199591244
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591244.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-01-01

This book weaves a three-part story around the reception of a group of ancient poems in the grammar schools of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. First, it argues that the ancient Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 BCE) is an agile theorist of the nature and mechanics of instruction. Second, the book offers a long view of pedagogical engagements with a sequence of self-reflexive studies of instruction in his canonical poems, emphasizing how grammarians, commentators, editors, schoolmasters, and translators responded to this aspect of Virgil's achievement in the midst of their own attempts to make his poems teachable. Third, the book contends that complex responses to Virgil's meditations on instruction pervade early modern grammar texts, miscellaneous schoolbooks, and works by writers such as Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17–1547), Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and John Milton (1608–1674). Identifying and tracking traditions of interest in Virgil's preoccupation with instruction, the book argues, further, that humanist pedagogy is characterized not only by an evolving commitment to classical Latinity and the studia humanitatis, but also by a commitment to studying the dilating space that separates the master from his schoolboys. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England the discourse of ‘mastery’, of self-sufficient and pre-eminent achievement, frequently struggles to conceive of itself in any form other than the paradigmatic relationship between schoolmaster and scholar.

Aegina: Contexts for Choral Lyric Poetry

David Fearn — 2011-01-01

Author:: DavidFearnAssistant Professor in Greek Literature, University of Warwickhttp://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/staff/fearn/
ISBN:: 9780199546510
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546510.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-01-01

Situated in the centre of the Saronic Gulf, the island of Aegina has long been recognized as a powerful force in the cultural, political, economic, and strategic history of fifth-century Greece. The island is well known as the original home of the magnificent Doric architecture and sculpture of the Temple of Aphaia and of many of the patrons of the epinician poets Pindar and Bacchylides; with a thriving maritime economy and an effective navy, Aegina was powerful enough to challenge the security and ambitions of its neighbour Athens, by whom it was reduced to a kleruchy at the start of the Peloponnesian War. Many of the fascinating aspects of the island within the history and culture of fifth-century Greece have, however, been studied separately, rendering a rounded view of the significance of the island, and the significance of the island's choral lyric poetry, difficult. This volume aims to redress the balance by suggesting ways in which the different aspects of the island's make-up can fruitfully be explored together. Eleven chapters by established and younger scholars examine different aspects of the island's nature, and factors which link them: mythological genealogies, economics, cult song, religion, athletics, epinician poetry, inter-state networking, aristocratic politics and culture, art history, and the views of the island offered by classical historiography. The interdisciplinary nature of the volume aims to provide new insights into the diversity and significance of classical Greek history and culture, as well as being suggestive for future research on the cultural and political diversity of classical Greece.

The Hidden Chorus

L. A. Swift — 2010-05-01

Author:: L. A. Swift
ISBN:: 9780199577842
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577842.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-05-01

Choral performance permeated Greek life on every level, from private weddings and funerals to large‐scale religious festivals, yet the relationship between these ritual choruses and the better known choruses of tragedy has never been systematically examined. This book represents the first detailed study of the interaction between tragic and lyric choral song. It aims to enrich our understanding of the socio‐cultural position of both tragedy and lyric poetry, exploring the roles that these types of song played within the ritual life of the community. Thus through the connections between tragic and non‐tragic lyric, we not only gain insights into individual plays but also develop a broader understanding of the musical culture of the Greek polis. The first two chapters deal with methodological groundwork, exploring theoretical approaches to genre, and investigating lyric performance in fifth‐century Athens. The bulk of the book consists of detailed discussions of five lyric genres, with chapters on paian, epinikion, partheneia, hymenaios, and Thrēnos. Each chapter includes a discussion of the genre in question, an overview of its use in tragedy, and detailed case‐studies of two or three plays where the lyric references are particularly rich and complex. An appendix to the book contains a comprehensive list of generic interaction in Greek tragedy, with a brief guide to how these references can be identified.

The Idea of Iambos

Andrea Rotstein — 2010-02-01

Author:: Andrea Rotstein
ISBN:: 9780199286270
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199286270.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2010-02-01

This study of the genre of Greek iambic poetry, from the perspective provided by ancient testimonies, places research on iambos in the framework of a new methodological approach to ancient genres based on the cognitive sciences, offering an unprecedented study of ancient theories of genres and the way they affected ancient scholarship. It examines the possibility of musical performance of iambic poetry as well as the various occasions of public performance, particularly at musical contests and rhapsodic recitals. The author argues that, from the Archaic to the Classical period, there was a shift from the notion of literary class depending primarily on rhythm and on its archetypical representative, Archilochus, towards iambos as a genre defined mainly by invective as its dominant feature.

Cratinus and the Art of Comedy

Emmanuela Bakola — 2010-02-01

Author:: Emmanuela Bakola
ISBN:: 9780199569359
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199569359.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2010-02-01

Cratinus, one of the great lost poets of fifth-century Athenian comedy and a canonical author of the classical world, had a formative influence on the comic genre, including Aristophanes himself. In what is the first major monograph in the best part of a century devoted to this author, Emmanuela Bakola offers a modern, comprehensive overview of Cratinus and his position within the genre of Greek comedy using a methodologically innovative approach. Unlike traditional ways of addressing fragmentary drama, this book does not merely reconstruct plays or texts, but by drawing on a range of hermeneutic frameworks, it adopts a thematic approach which allows her to explore Cratinus' poetics. Major issues which this book addresses include the creation of a poetic persona within a performative tradition of vigorous interpoetic rivalry; comedy's interaction with lyric poetry, iambos, and the literary-critical debates reflected by these genres; the play with the boundaries of the comic genre and the interaction with satyr drama and tragedy, especially Aeschylus; the multiple levels of comic plot-construction and characterization; comedy's reflection on its immediate political, social, and intellectual context; stagecraft and dramaturgy; comedy and ritual. Whilst being firmly based on principles of rigorous textual analysis, philology, and papyrology, by taking a broad and diverse outlook this study offers not just an insight into Cratinus, but a way of opening up and enriching our understanding of fifth-century Athenian comedy in a dynamic evolving environment.

The Poetry of Pathos

Gian Biagio Conte and S. J. Harrison — 2010-01-01

Author:: Gian Biagio ConteS. J.HarrisonFellow and Tutor in Classics, Corpus Christi College, and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature, University of Oxford
ISBN:: 9780199287017
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199287017.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This volume presents a collection of pieces from a celebrated world-class scholar and interpreter of Latin poetry, focusing on the interpretation of Virgil's Aeneid. It forms the sequel to two widely influential earlier books on Virgil by the same author and translates and adds to a collection of papers published in Italian in 2002. Its central concern is the way in which Virgil reworks earlier poetry (especially that of Homer) at the most detailed level to produce very broad literary and emotional effects. Through detailed scholarly analysis, the book explores a central issue in Virgilian studies, that of how the Aeneid manages to create a new and effective mode of epic in a period when the genre appears to be debased or exhausted.

The Poetics of Latin Didactic

Katharina Volk — 2010-01-01

Author:: Katharina Volk
ISBN:: 9780199245505
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245505.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This book examines the genre of ancient didactic poetry, focusing in particular on the Latin authors Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, and Manilius. Greek and Latin literature abounds in didactic poetry — poems that undertake to teach a field of knowledge or practical skill — but already, the ancients found it difficult to gain a theoretical understanding of this genre, and modern readers often perceive didactic texts as dry and overly technical. The book proposes a new theoretical approach to this elusive poetic type, identifying the following four defining criteria for didactic poetry: poetic intent, teacher-student constellation, poetic self-consciousness, and poetic simultaneity. In addition to an historical survey of the genre from Hesiod to the Roman Republic, the work contains individual chapters with detailed interpretations of Lucretius' De rerum natura, Vergil's Georgics, Ovid's Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris, and Manilius' Astronomica. Throughout, special attention is paid to poetics; that is, the ways in which didactic texts explicitly present themselves as poetry and the ideas of poetry that they project. Though often regarded as ‘unpoetic’, didactic poems turn out to be especially rich in reflections on poetics and to comment self-consciously on their own status as both instructional and artistic texts.

Pindar's Songs for Young Athletes of Aigina

Anne Pippin Burnett — 2010-01-01

Author:: Anne Pippin Burnett
ISBN:: 9780199277940
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199277940.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This book examines choral performance, audience response, and the poetic means used by Greek lyric poet Pindar to control this response. It consists of individual studies of Pindar's eleven odes for Aiginetan victors, preceded by a brief survey of the history of the island and the nature of its aristocracy. The discussion focuses in particular on questions of mythic self-presentation in Pindar's choral songs, as exemplified by such non-literary evidence as the pedimental sculptures of the Aphaia Temple, and the parallel ‘narrative’ sections of the odes. The overall concern is with Pindaric techniques for unifying an audience and leading it into a shared experience of inspired success, but there is also a concern with the realities of athletic contest and its celebration.

Layers of Loyalty in Latin Panegyric

Roger Rees — 2010-01-01

Author:: Roger Rees
ISBN:: 9780199249183
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249183.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This book relates the historical circumstances of five panegyrical speeches to survive from late antique Gaul to their literary characteristics and ideological perspectives. The years 289-307 saw great constitutional upheaval in the Roman Empire, with the various collegiate governments instituted by Diocletian. The speeches, preserved as part of the Panegyrici Latini collection, form part of the reaction and response of the Gallic aristocracy to the changing political environment. The five main chapters present in chronological sequence close readings of the Latin texts, in each case firmly grounded in the historical context, including constitutional and military developments. Rather than a medium of bland and enervating propaganda, panegyric itself is seen to be a flexible discourse, capable of nuance and change; through the speeches, Gallic loyalty to the various Roman emperors who held office at this time is seen to fluctuate.

Latin Epics of the New Testament

Roger P. H. Green — 2010-01-01

Author:: Roger P. H. Green
ISBN:: 9780199284573
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199284573.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

The topic of the book is three Christian epic poets of Late Antiquity who, though somewhat neglected in modern times, are notable in many ways, especially in their aim of harnessing the tradition of classical Latin epic to the task of presenting the New Testament to the learned readers, whether they be Christian believers or curious enquirers, perhaps put off by the style of Bible translations. This triad were pioneers in their time but their works would soon become staple ingredients of the medieval curriculum. The book carefully introduces each author, setting them in their own contexts and backgrounds (one was from the fourth, one from the fifth, and one from the sixth century), and examines their work in detail. Particular themes illustrated and discussed are their strategies in rendering, sometimes literally, sometimes not, the Biblical narratives, the ways in which they reflect and exploit the classical epic poets in their design, style and vocabulary, and the particular theological agendas which they may pursue, implicitly or explicitly. The book engages fully and critically with recent studies of Biblical epic and investigates critically and in detail numerous other questions. Full details of all modern studies that relate to these poets and their backgrounds are given in a large bibliography.

Homeric Voices

Elizabeth Minchin — 2010-01-01

Author:: Elizabeth Minchin
ISBN:: 9780199280124
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199280124.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

Although there has been considerable interest over time in the composition of narrative sections of the Homeric epics, there have been very few studies of the composition of the speeches and exchanges of speech that Homer depicts in his songs. This book attempts to redress the balance. Drawing on research in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and cognitive psychology, the book considers the speeches in Homer from two perspectives, as cognitive and as social phenomena. Part I explores the role of memory in the generation of Homer's speech forms; and the relationship between Homeric voices and the speech of the poet's everyday world. It is suggested that speech acts such as rebukes and the declining of invitations, and question forms and the pattern of hysteron-proteron so familiar to us in Homer, have their origins in pre-patterned forms of everyday speech; and that even the discourse strategies that underpin Homeric questions are recognizable to us from everyday talk. Part II formulates responses to the question of whether Homer reveals consistent differences in his representation of men's and women's talk. Men's and women's speech-habits are examined in order to detect whether there is a male preference for speech acts such as rebukes (a dominant mode) and a female preference for protests (a co-operative mode); and whether the use of information questions, directives, interruption, and even storytelling content and style can be identified with men's and women's different speaking styles. The absence of clearcut and consistent findings on this question does not diminish the value of the original question.

Hesperos

P. J. Finglass, C. Collard, and N. J. Richardson — 2010-01-01

Author:: P. J.FinglassLecturer in Classical Studies, University of Nottinghamhttp://www.nottingham.ac.uk/classics/people/patrick.finglassC.CollardBefore retirement, Professor of Classics, University of Wales at SwanseaN. J.RichardsonWarden of Greyfriars Hall, Oxford
ISBN:: 9780199285686
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199285686.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

Martin West is widely recognized as one of the most significant classicists of all time. Over nearly half a century his publications have transformed our understanding of Greek poetry. This book celebrates his achievement with twenty-five chapters on different areas of the subject which he has illuminated, written by distinguished scholars from four continents. It also includes West’s Balzan Prize acceptance speech, â€∼Forward into the Pastâ€™, in which he explains his approach to literary scholarship, and a complete bibliography of his academic publications.

Greek Epigram in the Roman Empire

Gideon Nisbet — 2010-01-01

Author:: Gideon Nisbet
ISBN:: 9780199263370
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263370.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

As the riches of the Greek Anthology indicate, classical and late antique epigram was predominantly written and read (and probably also performed) by Greeks, but modern ideas about the genre have largely been shaped by the poetry-books of the important Latin epigrammatist Martial. Martial's Romanised version of epigram borrows heavily and without acknowledgement from contemporary Greeks writing satirical (‘skoptic’) epigrams. This book looks at this influential and culturally revealing sub-genre. Although it looks back to Old and New Comedy, skoptic epigram was essentially new; the book demonstrates that it reflects concerns characteristic of Greek intellectual and literary culture (paideia) under the Roman Empire — the so-called ‘Second Sophistic’. The mysterious ‘Loukillios’ is skoptic epigram's first major poet, heavily influencing subsequent epigrammatists including Nikarkhos and (probably) the famous satirist Lucian; culturally Greek but with a Roman-influenced name, he is Martial's main literary model. As the book shows, Loukillian humour is frequently aggressive, enforcing appropriate models of cultural and gendered identity. Its misogyny now makes it a difficult read. But it also engages subversively with Roman hegemony: several extant poems satirise the Emperor Nero. Following Loukillios, poets less well represented in the Anthology — among them the punning Ammianos, the literary critic Pollianos, and Leonides (whose poems are simultaneously numerical puzzles) — take the sub-genre in new creative directions. The book also samples a range of occasional epigrammatists, including several politically important Romans (among them the Emperor Trajan) but also many unknowns; the brief conclusion emphasises skoptic epigram's radical inclusivity and subversive potential.

Eupolis, Poet of Old Comedy

Ian C. Storey — 2010-01-01

Author:: Ian C. Storey
ISBN:: 9780199259922
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259922.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

Eupolis (fl. 429–411 BC) was one of the best-attested of Aristophanes' rivals, and a major figure in the history of Athenian comedy. No complete work by this lost master has survived, but of his fourteen plays we have 500 fragments. These include 120 lines of his best-known comedy, Demoi (The Demes), which were discovered and published in 1911. Even in fragmentary form, Eupolis' plays shed interesting light on the whole range of issues — political, poetic, and dramatic — that make Aristophanes so perennially fascinating. This book provides a new annotated translation of all the remaining fragments, as well as a separate chapter on each lost play. It discusses Eupolis' career, redates the plays, examines how Eupolis was known in the ancient world, explores his relationship with Aristophanes (as both rival and collaborator), and delineates the distinct nature of the comedy that this prizewinning poet created.

Epic Interactions

M. J. Clarke, B. G. F. Currie, and R. O. A. M. Lyne — 2010-01-01

Author:: M. J.ClarkeLecturer in Classics, The National University of Ireland, Maynoothhttp://www.nuigalway.ie/classics/clarke/B. G. F.CurrieFellow and Tutor in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature, Oriel College, and Lecturer, Oxford Universityhttp://www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/content/97R. O. A. M.Lyne[Formerly] Professor of Classical Languages and Literature, University of Oxford, and a Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford
ISBN:: 9780199276301
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199276301.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This collection of chapters, written by former pupils of his, celebrates the career of Jasper Griffin, one of the foremost modern scholars of classical epic. The book surveys the epic tradition from the 8th century BC to the 19th century AD. Individual chapters focus on: Homer and the oral epic tradition; Homer in his religious context; Herodotus and Homer; Hellenistic epic; Virgil in his literary context; Virgil in his political-cultural context; the Augustan poets and the Aeneid; Statius' Thebaid; Old English and Old Irish epic; Renaissance epic: Tasso and Milton; and the Victorians. The aim of the book is to situate writers of epic in their literary and cultural contexts — the essence of the term ‘interaction’ in the title. The chapters singly offer insights into some of the foundational poems of the European epic tradition and together take a bold, holistic look at that tradition.

Cretan Women

Rebecca Armstrong — 2010-01-01

Author:: Rebecca Armstrong
ISBN:: 9780199284030
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199284030.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This book studies in detail the representations of Pasiphae, Ariadne, and Phaedra in Latin poetry. It investigates both the literary history of the myths (the Greek roots, the interactions between Roman versions) and their cultural resonance. In addition to close readings of the major treatments of each woman's story (in Catullus, Virgil, Ovid, and Seneca), the book offers extended thematic explorations of the importance of memory, wildness, and morality in the myths. By extending the net to encompass three women (all from the same ill-fated family), the book gives a clear picture of the complexity and fascinating interconnectedness of myths and texts in Ancient Rome.

Bacchylides

David Fearn — 2010-01-01

Author:: David Fearn
ISBN:: 9780199215508
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199215508.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This book combines close literary analysis of Bacchylides' poetry with detailed discussion of the central role poetry played in a variety of differing political contexts throughout Greece in the early 5th century BC. In Bacchylides' praise poetry, it is argued, the poet manipulates a wide range of earlier Greek literature not only to elevate the status of his wealthy patrons, but also to provoke thought about the nature of political power and aristocratic society. New light is also shed on Bacchylides' Dithyrambs, through detailed discussion of the evidence for the kuklios khoros (‘circular chorus’) and its relation to a variety of different religious festivals, especially within democratic Athens. The links created between literary concerns and cultural contexts reinvigorate these underappreciated poems and reveal their central importance for the self-definition of political communities.

The Art of Love

Roy Gibson, Steven Green, and Alison Sharrock — 2010-01-01

Author:: Roy GibsonStevenGreenLecturer in Classics, University of Leedshttp://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/people/20047/classics/person/707/steven_green, Alison Sharrock
ISBN:: 9780199277773
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199277773.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This collection of essays on Ovid's corpus of erotodidactic poetry from an international contingent of Ovidian scholars finds its origins in a major conference held at the University of Manchester in 2002. The contributors between them offer a series of perspectives on the issues that have dominated scholarship on the poems in recent decades: questions of genre, intertextuality, narratology, and reception; the socio-historical Augustan context for the poems; and the nature of ‘love’ as it is constructed in the poems. Moreover, the introduction provides a comprehensive history of scholarship on the poems in the last fifty years, in which the current papers are situated. As the first collection of critical essays on Ovid's erotodidactic poetry to appear in English, one final aim of the present volume (and its original conference) is to bring together the important cultural or national traditions – German, Italian, Anglophone (British, Irish, and American) – of scholarship on the Ars and Remedia that have so far existed largely in isolation.

Pindaric Metre: The ‘Other Half’

Kiichiro Itsumi — 2009-01-01

Author:: Kiichiro Itsumi
ISBN:: 9780199229611
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199229611.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2009-01-01

This book describes the metrical features of the twenty-two Pindaric epinikia which are not composed in dactylo-epitrite (‘the other half’). These odes are puzzling, and scholars currently assume, without detailed examination, that they are all composed in a single type of metre which is often called ‘aeolic’. The book argues that there are in fact two types of metre (Pindaric epinikia are not as polymetric as the odes of tragedy), and divides the metrical styles of the stanza-forms of the ‘other half’ into three groups, according to the way in which these two metres are knitted together. This is the main theme of Part I. Part II consists of metrical commentaries. The structure of each stanza-form is analysed and compared with others, and abundant metrical parallels are provided, both for the individual verses and for the stanza-form as a whole. In a few passages textual problems are also discussed, for metrical study is in part an auxiliary discipline of textual criticism. In particular, metrical understanding is essential when one has to judge whether or not exact responsion may be broken in a particular metrical position. In an Appendix to this Part, the metrical features of the major fragments (most of which are Paeans) and their characteristics are also described. With its clear identification of a series of precise entities from which Pindar's verses are made, the book's study as a whole imposes a new clarity and discipline on what had previously seemed a much vaguer process.

Homer's Cosmic Fabrication

Bruce Heiden — 2009-01-01

Author:: Bruce Heiden
ISBN:: 9780195341072
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341072.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2009-01-01

Although scholars routinely state that the Iliad is an “oral poem,” it has circulated as a text stabilized in writing since near the time of its composition. Thus, the Iliad undoubtedly has features that render it satisfactory to readers and reading. But the question of what these features might be has been difficult for Homeric scholarship to address within the research paradigm of “oral poetics.” This book delineates a new approach aimed at evaluating what the Iliad furnishes to readers. Its program conceptualizes the act of reading as a repertoire of cognitive functions a reader might deploy in collaboration with the poem's signs. By positing certain functions hypothetically and applying them to the poem, its experiments uncover the kind and degree of suitable “reading material” the poem provides. These analyses reveal that the trajectory of events in the Iliad manifests the central agency of one character, Zeus, and that the transmitted articulation of the epic into “books” conforms to distinct narrative subtrajectories. The analyses also show that the sequence of “books” functions as a design that cues attention to the major crises in the story, as well as to themes that develop its significance. The transmitted arrangement therefore furnishes an implicit cognitive map that both eases comprehension of the storyline and indicates pathways of interpretation.

Virgil Recomposed

Scott McGill — 2007-09-01

Author:: Scott McGill
ISBN:: 9780195175646
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195175646.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2007-09-01

The Virgilian centos, in which authors reconnect discrete lines taken from Virgil's Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid to create new poems, are some of the most striking texts to survive from antiquity. This book examines the twelve mythological and secular examples, which probably date from c.200-c.530. While verbal games, the centos deserve to be taken seriously for what they disclose about Virgil's reception, late-antique literary culture, and other important historical and theoretical topics in literary criticism. As radically intertextual works, the centos are particularly valuable sites for investigating topics in allusion studies: when can and should audiences read texts allusively? What is the role of the author and the reader in creating allusions? How does one determine the functions of allusions? This book explores these and other questions, and in the process comes into dialogue with major critical issues.

Readers and Writers in Ovid's Heroides

Efrossini Spentzou — 2007-09-01

Author:: Efrossini Spentzou
ISBN:: 9780199255689
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199255689.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2007-09-01

This book presents a study which reconstructs the experiences of the abandoned heroines of the Heroides, which have been largely ignored by past criticism. The book seeks ways to isolate, characterize, and release the female voice and experience within Ovid's male-authored text. Building on a wide range of ancient as well as modern images and reflections on gender and writing, the book attempts to map the relationship between gendered sensitivities and experience and generic expression and choices. The book uses the insight gained by the boom of intertextual studies in recent Latin scholarship to go a step further and address explicitly the ideologies of intertextual studies. This is a book about readers and reading, just as much as about women and gender, and it is also a study of the intricate and heated negotiations behind the interpretative act.

Latin Poetry and the Judgement of Taste

Charles Martindale — 2007-09-01

Author:: Charles Martindale
ISBN:: 9780199240401
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199240401.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2007-09-01

The aim of this book is to encourage an interest in the tradition of modern Western aesthetics as it applies to poetry and the arts. It argues that the study of literature today is unduly dominated by ideology critique, and that there is a need for a new recognition of the importance of beauty and the aesthetic in our response to the arts. It explores ways in which Kant’s aesthetic theory, as set out in the Critique of Judgement, still provides powerful tools of analysis for the modern critic. For example, the Kantian aesthetic — the free judgement of taste — carries a rebuke to the means/end rationality that is so widespread and so dangerous in the contemporary West. It shows that the Kantian ‘judgement of taste’ is a judgement of form and content together, and is thus not a version of formalism. It explores the relationship between politics and aesthetics in the responses to the arts, arguing that aesthetic judgements are not simply disguised judgements of other kinds. Finally, it urges on those writing about literature the value of aesthetic criticism — the attempt to isolate the unique aesthetic quality of artworks — as pioneered by Walter Pater, offering three essays on Latin poets as examples of what might be done.

Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace

S. J. Harrison — 2007-09-01

Author:: S. J. Harrison
ISBN:: 9780199203581
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199203581.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2007-09-01

This book responds to an important question of literary history: why did the period 40-13 BC in Rome produce such a rich range of complex poetical texts? The co-existence of great poets such as Vergil and Horace in contemporary literary circles, and the political stimulus and stability offered by the upheavals of the triumviral period and the following pax Augusta offer a sociological and historical background, but the concern here is with literary complexity and literary history. As has long been observed, generic concerns and generic mixtures are central to Augustan poetry. As has also been observed (e.g., in Kroll's formulation of the ‘crossing of genres’), this feature recalls the poetry of Ptolemaic Alexandria which offers many literary-historical parallels. Both were periods of literature where poets operated under the shadow of classical Greek predecessors, and strove for novelty, either by creating new genres or by varying existing ones through ‘contamination’ with other kinds of writing. Generic issues are examined through a double lens — that of ancient generic markers and that of modern genre theory — in an approach which owes much to the work of Gian Biagio Conte. The language and other characterizing patterns of ancient poetical genres constitute the basic material of this book, but some fundamental theoretical ideas are needed to categorize and order that material. How can we define a literary genre in ancient terms (e.g., should we follow Francis Cairns)? Is the attractive distinction between genres and modes made by Alastair Fowler of use for the poetry of Augustan Rome? The ultimate conclusion of this book is that many poetic genres were profoundly enriched in the Augustan period by close encounters with other genres. The emphasis is on texts and genres rather than authors, since the whole premiss of the study is that generic features, working within an established tradition, are more easily recovered than authorial intentions.

The Dance of the Muses

A. P. David — 2007-09-01

Author:: A. P. David
ISBN:: 9780199292400
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199292400.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2007-09-01

This book develops an authentic and revolutionary musical analysis of ancient Greek poetry. It brings the interpretation of ancient verse into step with the sorts of analyses customarily enjoyed by works in all the more recent poetical and musical traditions. It departs from the abstract metrical analyses of the past in that it conceives the rhythmic and harmonic elements of poetry as integral to the whole expression, and decisive in the interpretation of its meaning. Such an analysis is now possible because of a new theory of the Greek tonic accent, set out in the third chapter, and its application to Greek poetry understood as choreia — the proper name for the art and work of ancient poets in both epic and lyric, described by Plato as a synthesis of dance rhythm and vocal harmony, in disagreement moving toward agreement. The book offers a thorough-going treatment of Homeric poetics: here some remarkable discoveries in the harmonic movement of epic verse, when combined with some neglected facts about the origin of the hexameter in a ‘dance of the Muses’, lead to essential new thinking about the genesis and the form of Homeric poetry. The book also gives a foretaste of the fruits to be harvested in lyric by a musical analysis, applying the new theory of the accent and considering concretely the role of dance in performance.