Literature in the Greek and Roman worlds : a new perspective

This book consists of seventeen essays by a team of international scholars exploring aspects of the reception of literature from the earliest surviving Greek poetry to the demise of classical literature at the end of the Roman empire. Deploying fresh insights to map out lively and provocative surveys, the contributors examine all genres of the classical world -- epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, philosophy, rhetoric, epigram, elegy, pastoral, satire, biography, epistle, declamation, panegyric -- in search of answers to the questions of who were the genres for and what did these people make of them. Introduction / Oliver Taplin -- The Spring Of The Muses : Homer And Related Poetry / Oliver Taplin -- The Strangeness Of 'song Culture' : Archaic Greek Poetry / Leslie Kurke -- Powers Of Horror And Laughter : The Great Age Of Drama / Peter Wilson -- Charting The Poles Of History : Herodotos And Thoukydides / Leslie Kurke -- Sages, Sophists, And Philosophers : Greek Wisdom Literature / Andrea Wilson Nightingale -- Observers Of Speeches And Hearers Of Action : The Athenian Orators / Chris Carey -- Sophisticates And Solecisms : Greek Literature After The Classical Period / Jane L. Lightfoot -- Romanized Greeks And Hellenized Romans : Later Greek Literature / Jane L. Lightfoot --primitivism And Power : The Beginnings Of Latin Literature / Matthew Leigh -- (cont.) Forging A National Identity : Prose Literature Down To The Time Of Augustus / Christina S. Kraus-- Escapes From Orthodoxy : Poetry Of The Republic / Llewelyn Morgan -- Creativity Out Of Chaos : Poetry Between The Death Of Caesar And The Death Of Virgil / Llewelyn Morgan -- Coming To Terms With The Empire : Poetry Of The Later Augustan And Tiberian Period / Philip Hardie -- The Path Between Truculence And Servility : Prose Literature From Augustus To Hadrian / Christina S. Kraus -- Oblique Politics : Epic Of The Imperial Period / Matthew Leigh. -- Imperial Space And Time : The Literature Of Leisure / Catherine Connors. -- Culture Wars : Latin Literature From The Second Century To The End Of The Classical Era / Michael Dewar. Edited By Oliver Taplin. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 547-561) And Index. 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