Product Description: First published in 1988, this study explains how certain genres created by Classical poets were adapted and sometimes transformed by the poets of the modern world, beginning with the Tudor poets’ rediscovery of the Classical heritage...read more

In Echoing Hylas, Mark Heerink argues that the story of Hylas—a famous episode of the Argonauts’ voyage—was used by poets throughout classical antiquity to reflect symbolically on the position of their poetry in the literary tradition. Certain elements of the story, including the characters of Hylas and Hercules themselves, functioned as metaphors of the art of poetry. In the Hellenistic age, for example, the poet Theocritus employed Hylas as an emblem of his innovative bucolic verse, contrasting the boy with Hercules, who symbolized an older, heroic-epic tradition. The Roman poet Propertius further developed and transformed Theocritus’ metapoetical allegory by turning Heracles into an elegiac lover in pursuit of an unattainable object of affection. In this way, the myth of Hylas became the subject of a dialogue among poets across time, from the Hellenistic age to the Flavian era. Each poet, Heerink demonstrates, used elements of the myth to claim his own place in a developing literary tradition.             With this innovative diachronic approach, Heerink opens a new dimension of ancient metapoetics and offers many insights into the works of Apollonius of Rhodes, Theocritus, Virgil, Ovid, Valerius Flaccus, and Statius.

This book concerns the way we read--or rather, imagine we are listening to--ancient Greek and Latin poetry. Through clear and penetrating analysis Mark Edwards shows how an understanding of the effects of word order and meter is vital for appreciating the meaning of classical poetry, composed for listening audiences. The first of four chapters examines Homer's emphasis of certain words by their positioning; a passage from the Iliad is analyzed, and a poem of Tennyson illustrates English parallels. The second considers Homer's techniques of disguising the break in the narrative when changing a scene's location or characters, to maintain his audience's attention. In the third we learn, partly through an English translation matching the rhythm, how Aeschylus chose and adapted meters to arouse listeners' emotions. The final chapter examines how Latin poets, particularly Propertius, infused their language with ambiguities and multiple meanings. An appendix examines the use of classical meters by twentieth-century American and English poets. Based on the author's Martin Classical Lectures at Oberlin College in 1998, this book will enrich the appreciation of classicists and their students for the immense possibilities of the languages they read, translate, and teach. Since the Greek and Latin quotations are translated into English, it will also be welcomed by non-classicists as an aid to understanding the enormous influence of ancient Greek and Latin poetry on modern Western literature.

Product Description: Aphrodite and Eros – the portrayal of these two gods and the depiction of their active intervention have a significant impact on the plots of numerous classical tragedies. Focussing upon a selection of dramas from Aeschylus to Seneca, the author demonstrates how the images of these two multifaceted gods have been transmitted and altered, at the same time that certain features have been preserved...read more

Product Description: This collection of fourteen papers focuses on Classical poetry and historiography, with contributions coming from scholars from all over the UK and America. Contents: Greek and Roman Poetry: The Pleasures of the Ancient Text, or The Pleasure of Poetry from Plato to Plutarch ( David Konstan ); The Eschatology of the Epitaphs in the New Posidippus Papyrus ( M W Dickie ); The Legal and Social Framework of Plautus' Cistellaria ( Peter G McC Brown ); The Ancient Etymology of Carmen ( Alex Hardie ); Etymologising and the Structure of Argument in Lucretius Book 1 ( Robert Maltby ); Teucer's Imperium (Horace Odes 1...read more

Product Description: There has long been vital interest in the ways that texts affect each other--through translation, imitation, parody, and other forms of emulation and subversion. Throughout the last two millennia, the Virgilian text has created its own intertextual heritage, persisting in the works of Eliot, Frost, Lowell, and Heaney...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness presents a model for studying the history of lyric as a genre. Prof Miller draws a distinction between the work of the Greek lyrists and the more condensed, personal poetry that we associate with lyric. He then confronts the theoretical issues and presents a sophisticated, Bakhtinian reading of the development of the lyric form from its origins in archaic Greece to the more individualist style of Augustan Rome. This book will appeal to classicists and, since English translations of passages from the ancient authors are provided, to those who specialise in comparative literature.

Book by Weissman, Judith

Product Description: This lecture was delivered by Donald Russell, Fellow of St John's College, University of Oxford, to mark his retirement from the post of Professor of Classical Literature. It was given at the Hall of St John's College on 20th May, 1988...read more

Product Description: Book by Sellstrom, A. Donald