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How are poetry and the figure of the poet represented, discussed, contested within the poetry of ancient Greece? From what position does a poet speak? With what authority? With what debts to the past? With what involvement in the present? Through a series of interrelated essays on Homer, lyric poetry, Aristophanes, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes, this landmark volume discusses key aspects of the history of poetics: tale-telling and the representation of man as the user of language; memorial and praise; parody, comedy and carnival; irony, masks and desire; the legacy of the past and the idea of influence. Detailed readings of major works of Greek literature and liberal use of critical writings from outside Classics help to align modern and ancient poetics in enlightening ways. This revised edition contains a substantial new Introduction which engages with critical and scholarly developments in Greek literature since the original publication.
Foreword
Preface
Introduction: Sounding Out The Poet's Voice
1. The poet hero: language and representation in the Odyssey
2. Intimations of immortality: fame and tradition from Homer to Pindar
3. Comic inversion and inverted commas: Aristophanes and parody
4. Framing, polyphony and desire: Theocritus and Hellenistic poetics
5. The paradigms of epic: Apollonius Rhodius and the example of the past
Bibliography
Index.
Description
How are poetry and the figure of the poet represented, discussed, contested within the poetry of ancient Greece? From what position does a poet speak? With what authority? With what debts to the past? With what involvement in the present? Through a series of interrelated essays on Homer, lyric poetry, Aristophanes, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes, this landmark volume discusses key aspects of the history of poetics: tale-telling and the representation of man as the user of language; memorial and praise; parody, comedy and carnival; irony, masks and desire; the legacy of the past and the idea of influence. Detailed readings of major works of Greek literature and liberal use of critical writings from outside Classics help to align modern and ancient poetics in enlightening ways. This revised edition contains a substantial new Introduction which engages with critical and scholarly developments in Greek literature since the original publication.
