Untimely Epic
Untimely Epic

Author: Tom Phillips

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-04-29

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0198848560

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Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica is a voyage across time as well as space. The Argonauts encounter monsters, nymphs, shepherds, and kings who represent earlier stages of the cosmos or human society; they are given glimpses into the future, and themselves effect changes in the world through which they travel. Readers undergo a still more complex form of temporal transport, enabled not just to imagine themselves into the deep past, but to examine the layers of poetic and intellectual history from which Apollonius crafts his poem. Taking its lead from ancient critical preoccupations with poetry's ethical significance, this volume argues that the Argonautica produces an understanding of time and temporal experience which ramifies variously in readers' lives. When describing the people and creatures who lived the past, Apollonius extends readers' capacity for empathetic response to the worlds inhabited by others. In the ecphrasis of Jason's cloak and the account of Jason's conversations with Medea, readers are invited to scrutinize the relationship between exempla and temporal change, while episodes such as the taking of the Golden Fleece explore links between perceptions and their temporal situation. Running through the poem, and through the readings that comprise this book, is an attention to the intellectual potential of the 'untimely' - objects, experience, and language which do not belong straightforwardly to a particular time. Treatment of such phenomena is crucial to the poem's aspiration to inform and expand readers' understanding of themselves as subjects in and of history.

The Dark Side of Statius' Achilleid
The Dark Side of Statius' Achilleid

Author: Julene Abad Del Vecchio

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-07-25

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0198895224

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The Dark Side of Statius' Achilleid explores systematically and for the first time the darker aspects of Statius' Achilleid, bringing to light the poem's tragic and epic dimensions. By seeking to position at centre-stage these darker elements, the book offers several new readings of the Achilleid in relation to its literary inheritance, its gender dynamics, and its generic tensions. This volume delves beneath the surface of a story that ostensibly deals with a light subject matter—the cross-dressing of a young Achilles on Scyros—to offer an in-depth examination of the poem's relationship to its epic and tragic precursors, and to explore its more serious themes. It is shown to challenge traditional epic narratives, examine Achilles' complex familial relationships and his deviant and transgressive heroism, highlight the tragic character of Thetis, and provide glimpses of the horrors that the cataclysmic Trojan War will beget. By looking into Statius' wide-ranging dialogue with his literary predecessors, such as Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Seneca, as well as Statius' previous epic magnum opus, the Thebaid, the multidimensional characterisations of Achilles and other of the poem's key characters, such as Ulysses, Calchas, and Thetis are investigated. Far from simply representing a shameful but essentially humorous cross-dressing episode in Achilles' life that is destined to be forgotten, the Achilleid can be seen to challenge the very fabric of epic by probing the validity and authority of its literary tradition, as well as highlighting its highly innovative and experimental nature.

Temporalities, Texts, Ideologies
Temporalities, Texts, Ideologies

Author: Bobby Xinyue

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-01-11

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1350257249

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Temporalities, Texts, Ideologies provides a new analysis of the significance of time in Classical and early modern literature, demonstrating that literary temporality continually intervenes in questions of ontology, hierarchy and politics. Examining a diverse range of texts from Homeric epic to eighteenth-century poems on the Last Judgement, this collection of essays contends that temporality in literature sits at the heart of how authors from antiquity through to the early modern period understood and negotiated the structures that shaped their lives and may shape lives to come. Approaching the topic through four themes, the essays in this volume highlight the ways in which time is construed as relational, contestable and politically inflected. The authors show that variations in temporalities enable texts to critique the interactions or tensions between tradition and change, agency and determinism, social system and individual experience. The result is a refreshing approach to literary figurations of time that responds to the recent 'temporal turn' in the humanities, engages with current critical trends (such as ontological analysis and ecological criticism), and opens up an exciting new direction for future research on the connection between time, text, and context.

‚Lieber mit Homer irren‘? Scheinbar unmögliche Autopsien in den Totenbegegnungen frühkaiserzeitlicher Epik
‚Lieber mit Homer irren‘? Scheinbar unmögliche Autopsien in den Totenbegegnungen frühkaiserzeitlicher Epik

Author: Andreas Heil

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-03-21

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9004511350

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This monograph examines the literary representation of encounters between the living and the dead in Homer and the Roman epic poets of the early imperial period. The focus is on one particular situation: a witness to the afterlife (e.g. Odysseus or the Sibyl) who narrates encounters with the dead that he or she cannot (it would appear) actually have seen. This insufficiently studied and intriguing motif, namely seemingly impossible eye-witness testimony, can already be traced in Homer and then with variations in Vergil, the Culex poet, Lucan, Silius Italicus, and Statius. Die vorliegende Monographie untersucht die literarische Gestaltung von Begegnungen zwischen Lebenden und Toten bei Homer und den römischen Epikern der frühen Kaiserzeit. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei eine besondere Situation: Ein Jenseitszeuge (z.B. Odysseus oder die Sibylle) berichtet von Begegnungen mit Toten, die er oder sie (scheinbar) nicht gesehen haben kann. Dieses unzureichend erforschte und faszinierende Motiv, nämlich die scheinbar unmögliche Autopsie, lässt sich bereits bei Homer und dann in Variationen bei Vergil, dem Culex-Dichter, Lucan, Silius Italicus und Statius nachweisen.

Hesiod and the Beginnings of Greek Philosophy
Hesiod and the Beginnings of Greek Philosophy

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-05-02

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 9004513922

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This fascinating volume rethinks the relationship between early Greek philosophers and the epic poet Hesiod, by presenting fifteen studies that offer different perspectives on matters of style, genre, intertextuality and the history of ideas.

LUX: Studies in Greek and Latin Literature
LUX: Studies in Greek and Latin Literature

Author: Myrto Aloumpi

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-10-21

Total Pages: 954

ISBN-13: 3111448843

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This volume of essays in honor of Lucia Athanassaki offers a great variety of chapters on a number of topics in Greek and Latin literature and genres, from Greek epic and lyric poetry to Greek drama and late antiquity, Greek historiography, and Latin lyric poetry.

In the Mists of Time: Negotiating the Past in Ancient Literature
In the Mists of Time: Negotiating the Past in Ancient Literature

Author: Franco Montanari

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-10-07

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 3111502198

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The idea of the past, far from suggesting a nostalgic longing or an antiquarian curiosity for ages and cultures irrevocably lost, is essential to the human perception of the world. The volume at hand, entitled In the Mists of Time: Negotiating the Past in Ancient Literature, explores pastness as expressed through myth and early history and as reflected in sophisticated concepts and epistemological questions in Ancient Greek and Latin literature. The eighteen contributions illustrate how the ancients addressed the past through poetry, history and philosophy and lend insight into the metaliterary, self-reflexive way of dealing with past texts through scholarship.

A Companion to Greek Lyric
A Companion to Greek Lyric

Author: Laura Swift

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2022-05-11

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1119122651

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Discover the power of Greek lyric with essays from some of the foremost scholars in the field today Recent decades have seen a strong resurgence of interest in Greek lyric, resulting in this topic becoming one of the most dynamic areas of Classical scholarship. In A Companion to Greek Lyric, renowned Classical scholar Laura Swift delivers a collection of essays by international experts and emerging voices that offers up-to-date approaches on the methodology, contexts, and reception of Greek lyric from the archaic to the Hellenistic period. This edited volume includes detailed analyses of the poets themselves, as well as a reflection of the current state of play in the study of Greek lyric. It showcases the scope and range of approaches to be found in scholarly work in the field. Newcomers to the subject will benefit from the range of contextual and technical information included that allows for a more effective engagement with the lyric poets. Readers will also enjoy: Guidance on working with texts that are mainly preserved as fragments A selection of ways in which lyric poetry has influenced and inspired writers from Rome to the modern era Recommendations for further reading that offer a starting point for how to follow up on a particular topic Perfect for undergraduate and master’s students taking courses on Greek lyric or survey courses on classical literature, A Companion to Greek Lyric also belongs in the libraries of students of English or Comparative Literature seeking an authoritative resource for Greek lyric.

Homeric Questions
Homeric Questions

Author: Gregory Nagy

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2009-03-06

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0292778740

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A Choice Outstanding Academic Book The "Homeric Question" has vexed Classicists for generations. Was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey a single individual who created the poems at a particular moment in history? Or does the name "Homer" hide the shaping influence of the epic tradition during a long period of oral composition and transmission? In this innovative investigation, Gregory Nagy applies the insights of comparative linguistics and anthropology to offer a new historical model for understanding how, when, where, and why the Iliad and the Odyssey were ultimately preserved as written texts that could be handed down over two millennia. His model draws on the comparative evidence provided by living oral epic traditions, in which each performance of a song often involves a recomposition of the narrative. This evidence suggests that the written texts emerged from an evolutionary process in which composition, performance, and diffusion interacted to create the epics we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Sure to challenge orthodox views and provoke lively debate, Nagy's book will be essential reading for all students of oral traditions.

The Christian Invention of Time
The Christian Invention of Time

Author: Simon Goldhill

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-02-03

Total Pages: 517

ISBN-13: 1009080830

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Time is integral to human culture. Over the last two centuries people's relationship with time has been transformed through industrialisation, trade and technology. But the first such life-changing transformation – under Christianity's influence – happened in late antiquity. It was then that time began to be conceptualised in new ways, with discussion of eternity, life after death and the end of days. Individuals also began to experience time differently: from the seven-day week to the order of daily prayer and the festal calendar of Christmas and Easter. With trademark flair and versatility, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill uncovers this change in thinking. He explores how it took shape in the literary writing of late antiquity and how it resonates even today. His bold new cultural history will appeal to scholars and students of classics, cultural history, literary studies, and early Christianity alike.