Literature in the Greek and Roman worlds : a new perspective / edited by Oliver Taplin.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Taplin, Oliver.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Classical literature--History and criticism.

Classical literature.

Physical Description:

xv, 596 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford [England] ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2000]

Summary:

The focus of this book -- its new perspective -- is on the 'receivers' of literature: readers, spectators, and audiences. Twelve contributors, drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, explore the various and changing interactions between the makers of literature and their audiences or readers from the earliest Greek poetry to the end of the Roman empires in the Western and Eastern Mediterranean.

From the heights of Athens to the hellenistic Greek diaspora, from the great Augustans to the irresistible tide of Christianity, the contributors deploy fresh insights to map out lively and provocative, yet accessible, surveys. They cover the kinds of literature which have shaped western culture -- epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, philosophy, rhetoric, epigram, elegy, pastoral, satire, biography, epistle, declamation, and panegyric. Who were the audiences, and why did they regard their literature as so important?

Contents:

Greek Literature

1 The spring of the muses: Homer and related poetry / Oliver Taplin 22

2 The strangeness of 'song culture': Archaic Greek poetry / Leslie Kurke 58

3 Powers of horror and laughter: The great age of drama / Peter Wilson 88

4 Charting the poles of history: Herodotos and Thoukydides / Leslie Kurke 133

5 Sages, sophists, and philosophers: Greek wisdom literature / Andrea Wilson Nightingale 156

6 Observers of speeches and hearers of action: The Athenian orators / Chris Carey 192

7 Sophisticates and solecisms: Greek literature after the classical period / Jane L. Lightfoot 217

8 Romanized Greeks and Hellenized Romans: Later Greek literature / Jane L. Lightfoot 257

Latin Literature

9 Primitivism and power: The beginnings of Latin literature / Matthew Leigh 288

10 Forging a national identity: Prose literature down to the time of Augustus / Christina S. Kraus 311

11 Escapes from orthodoxy: Poetry of the late Republic / Llewelyn Morgan 336

12 Creativity out of chaos: Poetry between the death of Caesar and the death of Virgil / Llewelyn Morgan 359

13 Coming to terms with the Empire: Poetry of the later Augustan and Tiberian period / Philip Hardie 403

14 The path between truculence and servility: Prose literature from Augustus to Hadrian / Christina S. Kraus 438

15 Oblique politics: Epic of the imperial period / Matthew Leigh 468

16 Imperial space and time: The literature of leisure / Catherine Connors 492

17 Culture wars: Latin literature from the second century to the end of the classical era / Michael Dewar 519.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 547-561) and index.

ISBN:

0192100203

OCLC:

42861906