Essays On Ancient Greek Literature And Culture

Assembles a major scholar's work on Hellenistic and Imperial Greek poetry and the novels over four decades, illustrating its evolution.

"In this book one of the world's leading Hellenists brings together his many contributions over four decades to our understanding of early Greek literature, above all of elegiac poetry and its relation to fifth-century prose historiography, but also of early Greek epic, iambic, melic and epigrammatic poetry. Many chapters have become seminal, e.g., that which first proposed the importance of now-lost long narrative elegies, and others exploring their performance contexts when papyri published in 1992 and 2005 yielded fragments of such long poems by Simonides and Archilochus. Another chapter argues against the widespread view that Sappho composed and performed chiefly for audiences of young girls, suggesting instead that she was a virtuoso singer and lyre-player, entertaining men in the elite symposia whose verbal and musical components are explored in several other chapters of the book "--

In this book one of the world's leading Hellenists brings together his many contributions over four decades to our understanding of early Greek literature, above all of elegiac poetry and its relation to fifth-century prose historiography, but also of early Greek epic, iambic, melic and epigrammatic poetry. Many chapters have become seminal, e.g. that which first proposed the importance of now-lost long narrative elegies, and others exploring their performance contexts when papyri published in 1992 and 2005 yielded fragments of such long poems by Simonides and Archilochus. Another chapter argues against the widespread view that Sappho composed and performed chiefly for audiences of young girls, suggesting instead that she was a virtuoso singer and lyre-player, entertaining men in the elite symposia whose verbal and musical components are explored in several other chapters of the book. Two more volumes of collected papers will follow devoted to later Greek literature and culture.

How did Greek literature and culture interact? John Gould was one of the greatest writers on Greek civilisation of his generation. The most significant of his many essays, including several previously unpublished, are revised and gathered here.

In this book one of the world's leading Hellenists brings together his many contributions over four decades to our understanding of major genres of Greek literature, above all the Greek novel, but also Attic Comedy, fifth-century historiography, and Hellenistic and Imperial Greek poetry. Many are already essential reading, such as the chapter on the figure of Lycidas in Theocritus' Idyll 7, or two chapters on the ancient readership of Greek novels. Discussions of Imperial Greek poetry published three decades ago opened up a world almost entirely neglected by scholars. Several chapters address literary and linguistic issues in Longus' novel Daphnis and Chloe, complementing the author's commentary published in 2019; two contribute to a better understanding of the enigmatic Aethiopica of Heliodorus; and many explore important questions arising from examination of the form of the Greek novel as a whole. This is the second of a planned three-volume collection.

This book brings together a collection of original essays that engage with cultural geography and landscape studies to produce new ways of understanding place, space, and landscape in Greek literature from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The authors draw on an eclectic collection of contemporary approaches to bring the study of ancient Greek literature into dialogue with the burgeoning discussion of spatial theory in the humanities. The essays in this volume treat a variety of textual spaces, from the intimate to the expansive: the bedroom, ritual space, the law courts, theatrical space, the poetics of the city, and the landscape of war. And yet, all of the contributions are united by an interest in recuperating some of the many ways in which the ancient Greeks in the archaic and classical periods invested places with meaning and in how the representation of place links texts to social practices.

The study of Greco-Roman civilisation is as exciting and innovative today as it has ever been. This intriguing collection of essays by contemporary classicists reveals new discoveries, new interpretations and new ways of exploring the experiences of the ancient world. Through one and a half millennia of literature, politics, philosophy, law, religion and art, the classical world formed the origin of western culture and thought. This book emphasises the many ways in which it continues to engage with contemporary life. Offering a wide variety of authorial style, the chapters range in subject matter from contemporary poets' exploitation of Greek and Latin authors, via newly discovered literary texts and art works, to modern arguments about ancient democracy and slavery, and close readings of the great poets and philosophers of antiquity. This engaging book reflects the current rejuvenation of classical studies and will fascinate anyone with an interest in western history.

This collection examines major Greek authors from the early 19th century through the present day, spanning from romantic to post-modern authors, poets, and playwrights. The essays focus on intersections between oral and written traditions in nineteenth and twentieth century Greece. Major authors discussed included Solomos, Vizyenos, Papadiamantis, Seferis, and many others.