Solon And Early Greek Poetry

The poetry of archaic Greece gives voice to the history and politics of the culture of that age. This book explores the types of history that have been, and can be, written from archaic Greek Poetry, and the role this poetry had in articulating the social and political realities and ideologies of that period. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the stance of exhortation adopted in early Greek elegy, and to the political poetry of Solon; it also stresses the importance of considering performance context as a critical factor in interpreting the political expressions of this poetry. Part I of this study argues that the singing of elegiac paraenesis in the élite symposium reflects the attempt of symposiasts to assert a heroic identity for themselves within this wider polis community. Parts II and III turn to the political poetry of Solon: Part II demonstrates how the elegy of Solon both confirms the existence of this élite practise, and subverts it, drawing on the poetic traditions of epic and Hesiod to further different political aims; Part III looks beyond Solon's appropriations of poetic traditions to argue for another influence on Solon's political poetry, that of tyranny. The book concludes by exploring the implications of this reading of elegy for a political interpretation of the Homeric epics in Athens.

This 2005 book examines the history of archaic Greek through its poetry, particularly the work of Solon.

Now available in paperback for the first time, this collection of essays by specialists in the field offers fundamentally new perspectives on the poetry, laws, and historical facts associated with the figure of Solon of Athens.

New approach to translating the Greek lyric poets

This book brings a new approach to the study of the early Greek lyric poets. Instead of concentrating on the poetry as literature, Podlecki has chosen to examine the life and works of the leading poets of the eighth to fifth century B.C. in the context of the military and historical events of the period.

"Studies of the Greek Poets" in 2 volumes is one of the best-known works by the English poet and literary critic John Addington Symonds that features a comprehensive survey of Greek poetry. This carefully crafted Good Press ebook is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Contents: The Periods of Greek Literature Mythology Achilles The Women of Homer Hesiod Parmenides Empedocles The Gnomic Poets The Satirists The Lyric Poets Pindar Aeschylus Sophocles Greek Tragedy and Euripides The Fragments of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides The Fragments of the Lost Tragic Poets Ancient and Modern Tragedy Aristophanes The Comic Fragments The Idyllists The Anthology Hero and Leander The Genius of Greek Art Conclusion

The period from the eighth to the fifth centuries B.C. was one of extraordinary creativity in the Greek-speaking world. Poetry was a public and popular medium, and its production was closely related to developments in contemporary society. At the time when the city states were acquiring their distinctive institutions epic found the greatest of all its exponents in Homer, and lyric poetry for both solo and choral performance became a genre which attracted poets of the first rank, writers of the quality of Sappho, Alcaeus and Pindar, whose influence on later literature was to be profound. This volume covers the epic tradition, the didactic poems of Hesiod and his imitators, and the wide-ranging work of the iambic, elegiac and lyric poets of what is loosely called the archaic age. The contributors make use of recent papyrus finds (particularly in the case of Archilochus and Stesichorus) to fill out the picture of a cosmopolitan and highly sophisticated literary culture which had not yet found its intellectual centre in Athens.