Bücher der Reihe Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes

Agonistic or friendly song exchange in idyllic settings forms the very heart of Roman pastoral. It isalso a key means of metapoetic stance-taking on the part of the long line of authors who have cultivated this "e;traditional"e; genre. The present book examines the motif of song exchange in Roman bucolic poetry under this double aspect: as a central theme with established or constantly forming sub-themes and paraphernalia (thus providing a comprehensive listing, description and analysis of such scenes in the totality of Roman literature), and as the locus where, thanks to its very traditionality, innovative generic tendencies are most easily expressed. Starting from Vergil, and continuing with Calpurnius Siculus, the Einsiedeln Eclogues and Nemesianus, the book focuses on how politics, panegyric, elegy, heroic and didactic poetry function as guest genres within the pastoral host genre, by tracing in detail the evolution of a wide variety of literary, linguistic, stylistic and metrical features.

Addresses the performance and dissemination of Greek poems of the seventh to the fifth centuries BC whose premieres were presented by a chorus singing in a ritual context or in secular celebrations of athletic victories. This book also explores how choruses presented themselves.

A significant trend in the study of Greek and Roman historiographers is to accept that their works are to a degree both science and fiction. As scholarly interest broadens, in addition to evaluating ancient historians on the basis of the reliability of the information they record, and verifying the narratives against various elements of the material (inscriptions, excavations, numismatics), new studies are beginning to elaborate on the stylistic and narrative qualities of the texts themselves. The present volume offers a fine collection of essays that on the whole emphasize the literary dimensions of the ancient Greek and Roman historians. Offering narratological, linguistic, and theoretical approaches to historiography, the contributors of the book elaborate on the intersections between historiography and other literary genres, the literary manipulation of military events and the criteria of selectivity, the reception of ancient historical texts in other genres, time and space in historical narrative, and plenty of other relevant topics. The shared belief of the authors is that there is a close interrelation between the literary features and the scientific value of ancient Greek and Roman historiography.

The scholarly tendency has too often weakened the conspicuous novelty and originality that characterizes Zeus in the Iliad. This book remedies that tendency and depicts the extraordinary figure of Zeus: lord (or impersonation) of lightning and thunders, exclusive master of human destiny --and therefore of human history-and chief of Olympus. This unique personality endowed with polyvalent powers represents itself the conflict between superhuman moral indifference for mortal destiny and anthropomorphic feelings for human beings: he both preordains the death of his son and weeps on his demise. Zeus embodies the Mysterium tremendum. This new Zeus cannot glance at the past image that the tradition painted of him without smiling at its simplicity and disrespect: a parodic or amusing tone surrounds him as he refers or is referred to aspects of his traditional image. The great characters of the Poem give two wise responses to Zeus, lord of destiny: "e;heroic death"e; or serene acceptance. We, the readers, are expected to react in the same way.

The protagonists of the ancient novels wandered or were carried off to distant lands, from Italy in the west to Persia in the east and Ethiopia in the south; the authors themselves came, or pretended to come, from remote places such as Aphrodisia and Phoenicia; and the novelistic form had antecedents in a host of classical genres. These intersections are explored in this volume. Papers in the first section discuss ¿mapping the world in the novels.¿ The second part looks at the dialogical imagination, and the conversation between fiction and history in the novels. Section 3 looks at the way ancient fiction has been transmitted and received. Space, as the locus of cultural interaction and exchange, is the topic of the fourth part. The fifth and final section is devoted to character and emotion, and how these are perceived or constructed in ancient fiction. Overall, a rich picture is offered of the many spatial and cultural dimensions in a variety of ancient fictional genres.

Next to the Theogony and the Works and Days stands an entire corpus of fragmentary works attributed to the Boeotian poet Hesiod that has during the last thirty years attracted growing scholarly interest. Whereas other studies have concentrated either on the interpretation of the best preserved work of this corpus, the Catalogue of Women, or have offered detailed commentaries, this volume aims at bringing together studies focusing on generic and contextual factors pertaining to the various works of the Hesiodic corpus, the Catalogue of Women included, and the corpus' afterlife in Rome and Byzantium.

The construction of a new Latin library between the end of the Republic and the Augustan Principate was anything but an inhibiting factor. The literary flourishing of the Flavian age shows that awareness of this canon rather stimulated creative tension. In the changing socio-cultural context, daring innovations transform the genres of poetry and prose. This volume, which collects papers by influential scholars of early Imperial literature, sheds light on the productive dynamics of the ancient genre system and can also offer insightful perspectives to a non-classicist readership.

The categories of classical narratology have been successfully applied to ancient texts in the last two decades, but in the meantime narratological theory has moved on. In accordance with these developments, this title draws out the subtler possibilities of narratological analysis for the interpretation of ancient texts.

This collective volume provides a fresh perspective on Homeric reception through a methodologically focused, interdisciplinary investigation of the transformations of Homeric epic within varying generic and cultural contexts. It explores how various aspects of Homeric poetics appeal and can be mapped on to a diversity of contexts under different socio-historical, intellectual, literary and artistic conditions. The volume brings together internationally acclaimed scholars and acute young researchers in the fields of classics and reception studies, yielding insight into the varied strategies and ideological forces that define Homeric reception in literature, scholarship and the performing arts (theatre, film and music) and shape the 'horizon of expectations' of readers and audience. This collection also showcases that the wide-ranging 'migration' of Homeric material through time and across place holds significant cultural power, being instrumental in the construction of new cultural identities. The volume is of particular interest to scholars in the fields of classics, reception and cultural studies and the performing arts, as well as to readers fascinated by ancient literature and its cultural transformations.

This book addresses the performance and dissemination of Greek poems of the seventh to the fifth centuries BC. individuals' and communities' roles in funding performances and securing the circulation of texts; and how such performances contributed to transmission of the poems' texts.

The categories of classical narratology have been successfully applied to ancient texts in the last two decades, but in the meantime narratological theory has moved on. In accordance with these developments, Narratology and Interpretation draws out the subtler possibilities of narratological analysis for the interpretation of ancient texts.

Plautine Trends brings together experts on Roman comedy in a collective volume, focusing on key issues of modern Plautine research: Plautus's Greek models vs. interactive innovation, comic staging, metatheatrical aspects, as well as questions of language, structure, socio-historical and philosophical context, intertextuality and reception.

This volume brings together fifteen papers which address key issues in the field of Hellenistic studies. By reassessing conventional views and methods the volume aims at providing new insights into Hellenistic literature.

This book examines the dynamics of interfamilial violence in the Oresteia. By reading the play's narrative on interfamilial violence and matricide as a narrative of uncertainties in terms of the role of the mother figure, this book illustrates the complexity of the maternal role of Clytemnestra.

The narrative artistry of Polybius has received relatively little scholarly attention. Critics have tended to discuss his reflections on the various issues presented in his work or to use him as a source of valuable information about the historical period that he records. This volume, which draws on narratology's analytical tools, focuses instead on the narrative of the Histories, exploring the sophisticated narrative techniques that have gone into shaping it. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the ways the formal aspects of the text contribute to promoting Polybius' thematic concerns. Its aim is not only to present the Histories as the work of an author who has taken pains to provide us with a carefully structured story, but also to illustrate how interpretations of this story can be enriched by a sensitivity to factors such as chronological displacements and variations of focalization.