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The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic
  • Edited by Emma Greensmith
  • Published online:
    04 December 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024
  • Ancient Greek literature begins with the epic verses of Homer. Epic then continued as a fundamental literary form throughout antiquity and the influence of the poems produced extends beyond antiquity and down to the present. This Companion presents a fresh and boundary-breaking account of the ancient Greek epic tradition. It includes wide-ranging close readings of epics from Homer to Nonnus, traces their dialogues with other modes such as ancient Mesopotamian poetry, Greek lyric and didactic writing, and explores their afterlives in Byzantium, early Christianity, modern fiction and cinema, and the identity politics of Greece and Turkey. Plot summaries are provided for those unfamiliar with individual poems. Drawing on cutting-edge new research in a number of fields, such as racecraft, geopolitics and the theory of emotions, the volume demonstrates the sustained and often surprising power of this renowned ancient genre, and sheds new light on its continued impact and relevance today.

  • 10 - Trojan Temporality in Imperial Greek Epic

  • from Part III - Epic Time
  • Edited by Emma Greensmith, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic
    Published online:
    04 December 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024, pp 204-228

  • Summary

    This chapter considers the prominence of and play with temporality in imperial Greek epic through a reading of three poems which thematise time in particularly self-conscious ways: Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica, Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy and Colluthus’ Abduction of Helen. These epics all return directly to the world of Troy, resurrect Homer’s idiolect and style, and locate their plots before or in-between the timespan of the Iliad and Odyssey. Analysing some key moments of temporal reflexivity in these poems, the chapter outlines the specific ‘imperial Greek temporality’ that they share, which connects these otherwise very different poems and renders them distinct from, for instance, Apollonius’ Alexandrian epic as analysed by Phillips. These poets proudly return to the literary distant past and use this past to convey their own imperial identities, revelling in their paradoxical positions as both pre- and post-Homeric.

  • Introduction

  • Edited by Emma Greensmith, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic
    Published online:
    04 December 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024, pp 1-14
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  • Summary

    The Introduction makes the case for why it is important and timely to return afresh to ancient greek epic, despite or even because of the huge amount of scholarship that already exists on this genre. After a brief overview of the current state of the field, it outlines the main points of innovation and interventions of the volume, focusing on its thematic structure, its emphasis on the lesser-known authors or dimensions of Greek epic, and its integration of ancient material and modern responses to it. It ends with a brief overview of the sections of the volume and draws out the connections between the chapters within them.

  • 3 - Lucian’s Poetics

  • from Part I
    • By
  • Edited by Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Lucian
    Published online:
    07 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024, pp 50-77

  • Summary

    Lucian is an author inextricably connected to prose. In this chapter, I argue that poetry is a crucial and overlooked aspect of his literary identity. After an initial account of the striking presence of poetry in Lucian’s oeuvre and in wider Second Sophistic intellectual production, which operates beneath and beyond statements of disdain and disavowal, I turn to a close examination of three very different pieces of Lucian’s verse writing – from remixed tragic and epic ‘quotations’ in the Menippus and Zeus Tragoedus, to the ghostly new Homeric compositions in the True Histories – and highlight some key features of a Lucianic poetics. I ultimately suggest how this poetics articulates Lucian’s wider approach to the literary tradition, and his perception of his own role in continuing it. Lucian’s new-old verse provides him with a self-constructed mandate to reanimate the genres and conventions of the inherited past, to deflate them, disrupt them, and ultimately repossess them.

The Poet's Voice
  • Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature
  • 2nd edition
  • Simon Goldhill
  • Foreword by Emma Greensmith
  • Published online:
    31 October 2024
    Print publication:
    13 June 2024
  • 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.

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