Writing Literary History In The Greek And Roman World

Download or read book Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds written by Oliver Taplin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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? --jacket.

Download or read book Greek Literature and the Roman Empire written by Tim Whitmarsh and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2004 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greek Literature and the Roman Empire uses up-to-date literary and cultural theory to make a major and original contribution to the appreciation of Greek literature written under the Roman Empire during the second century CE (the so-called 'Second Sophistic'). This literature should not be dismissed as unoriginal and mediocre. Rather, its central preoccupations, especially mimesis and paideia, provide significant insights into the definition of Greek identity during the period. Focusing upon a series of key texts by important authors (including Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, Philostratus, Lucian, Favorinus, and the novelists), Whitmarsh argues that narratives telling of educated Greeks' philosophical advice to empowered Romans (including emperors) offer a crucial point of entry into the complex and often ambivalent relationships between Roman conquerors and Greek subjects. Their authors' rich and complex engagement with the literary past articulates an ingenious and sophisticated response to their present socio-political circumstances.

Download or read book Writing Literary History in the Greek and Roman World written by Giacomo Fedeli and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-30 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first study of ancient Greek and Roman literary history as a phenomenon on its own terms.

Download or read book Aspects of Orality and Greek Literature in the Roman Empire written by Consuelo Ruiz-Montero and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-05 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Orality was the backbone of ancient Greek culture throughout its different periods. This volume will serve to deepen the reader’s knowledge of how Greek texts circulated during the Roman Empire. The studies included here approach the subject from both a literary and a sociocultural point of view, illuminating the interconnections between literary and social practices. Topics considered include epigraphy, the rhetoric of transmitting the texts, language and speech, performance, theatre, narrative representation, material culture, and the interaction of different cultures. Since orality is a widespread phenomenon in the Greek-speaking world of the Roman Empire, this book draws the reader’s attention to under-researched texts and inscriptions.

Download or read book The Politics of Latin Literature written by Thomas N. Habinek and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-13 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to describe the intimate relationship between Latin literature and the politics of ancient Rome. Until now, most scholars have viewed classical Latin literature as a product of aesthetic concerns. Thomas Habinek shows, however, that literature was also a cultural practice that emerged from and intervened in the political and social struggles at the heart of the Roman world. Habinek considers major works by such authors as Cato, Cicero, Horace, Ovid, and Seneca. He shows that, from its beginnings in the late third century b.c. to its eclipse by Christian literature six hundred years later, classical literature served the evolving interests of Roman and, more particularly, aristocratic power. It fostered a prestige dialect, for example; it appropriated the cultural resources of dominated and colonized communities; and it helped to defuse potentially explosive challenges to prevailing values and authority. Literature also drew upon and enhanced other forms of social authority, such as patriarchy, religious ritual, cultural identity, and the aristocratic procedure of self-scrutiny, or existimatio. Habinek's analysis of the relationship between language and power in classical Rome breaks from the long Romantic tradition of viewing Roman authors as world-weary figures, aloof from mundane political concerns--a view, he shows, that usually reflects how scholars have seen themselves. The Politics of Latin Literature will stimulate new interest in the historical context of Latin literature and help to integrate classical studies into ongoing debates about the sociology of writing.

Download or read book Arrian the Historian written by Daniel W. Leon and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the first centuries of the Roman Empire, Greek intellectuals wrote a great many texts modeled on the dialect and literature of Classical Athens, some 500 years prior. Among the most successful of these literary figures were sophists, whose highly influential display oratory has been the prevailing focus of scholarship on Roman Greece over the past fifty years. Often overlooked are the period’s historians, who spurned sophistic oral performance in favor of written accounts. One such author is Arrian of Nicomedia. Daniel W. Leon examines the works of Arrian to show how the era's historians responded to their sophistic peers’ claims of authority and played a crucial role in theorizing the past at a time when knowledge of history was central to defining Greek cultural identity. Best known for his history of Alexander the Great, Arrian articulated a methodical approach to the study of the past and a notion of historical progress that established a continuous line of human activity leading to his present and imparting moral and political lessons. Using Arrian as a case study in Greek historiography, Leon demonstrates how the genre functioned during the Imperial Period and what it brings to the study of the Roman world in the second century.

Download or read book Material Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World written by Antonia Sarri and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Letter writing was widespread in the Graeco-Roman world, as indicated by the large number of surviving letters and their extensive coverage of all social categories. Despite a large amount of work that has been done on the topic of ancient epistolography, material and formatting conventions have remained underexplored, mainly due to the difficulty of accessing images of letters in the past. Thanks to the increasing availability of digital images and the appearance of more detailed and sophisticated editions, we are now in a position to study such aspects. This book examines the development of letter writing conventions from the archaic to Roman times, and is based on a wide corpus of letters that survive on their original material substrates. The bulk of the material is from Egypt, but the study takes account of comparative evidence from other regions of the Graeco-Roman world. Through analysis of developments in the use of letters, variations in formatting conventions, layout and authentication patterns according to the sociocultural background and communicational needs of writers, this book sheds light on changing trends in epistolary practice in Graeco-Roman society over a period of roughly eight hundred years. This book will appeal to scholars of Epistolography, Papyrology, Palaeography, Classics, Cultural History of the Graeco-Roman World.