Friendship and otherness in Lucian's "Toxaris" : a literary commentary / Laura Bottenberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bottenberg, Laura, author.

Series:

Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte ; Volume 162.

Untersuchungen Zur Antiken Literatur und Geschichte Series ; Volume 162

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lucian, of Samosata. Toxaris.

Lucian.

Lucian, of Samosata--Criticism and interpretation.

Friendship in literature.

Genre:

Literary criticism

Physical Description:

1 online resource (402 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Berlin, Germany : Walter de Gruyter, [2025]

Language Note:

Commentary in English; text of Toxaris in Greek with parallel English translation.

Summary:

In Lucian’s Toxaris, the characters’ speeches play a performative role as they become their deeds of friendship. Between irony and (self-)othering, past and present, the dialogue negotiates a mixed form of identity by affirming a Hellenocentric position and deconstructing an Athenocentric per-spective on Greek culture. Eventually, both aspects converge, as the characters’ ability to make speeches on friendship displays their mastery of Greekness. This book, itself a hybrid of commentary and monograph, consists of an introduction, which con-textualises the dialogue in its cultural, philosophical, and literary background; the Greek text with textual critical notes, followed by an English translation; and a commentary, which is organised ac-cording to the central themes of the dialogue: the representation of friendship and the decon-struction of stereotypes. The commentary helps us to better understand how friendship is ap-proached in this dialogue and how the latter relates to the value of friendship in the context of the Roman imperial period. Simultaneously, it provides an examination of the way in which different voices – serious or deriding, Greek or Scythian, etc. – are ambiguously entangled in Lucian’s dia-logue.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

Abbreviations

Part I: Introduction

1 The Toxaris and Its Context

2 The Structure of the Toxaris and the Mixis of Genres

3 Greeks and Scythians

4 Friendship

Part II: Text, Translation, and Commentary

Conspectus Siglorum

The Text

ΤΟΞΑΡΙΣ Η ΦΙΛΙΑ

Commentary

Bibliography

Index locorum

General Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

3-11-162611-3

OCLC:

1507699232