First published in 1962, this book is the first of two volumes which bridge the gap between the study of classics and the study of literature and attempt to reconcile the two disciplines. Focusing on elegy and lyric, this collection of essays offers a critical examination of Latin literature and aims to stimulate critical discussion of a selection of Latin poets. This experimental and ground-breaking book will be of particular interest to students of Roman Literature, Classics and Poetry.

Traditional views of Horace seek to present the poet as a consistent, vivid personality who stands behind and orchestrates the diverse "Horatian" writings that have come down to us. In recent years, however, an alternate tradition suggests that there may be many Horaces, that his work is more productively read as the constant invention of rhetorical techniques sensitively attuned to the requirements of different situations and audiences. As Randall L. B. McNeill argues, any sense that readers have of the "real" Horace is clearly deceptive; Horace offers us no unguarded self-portrait, but rather a number of consciously developed characterizations to suit diverse audiences, whether patron, peers, or the public. Horace: Image, Identity, and Audience provides a wide-ranging analysis of Horace's use of self-presentation in his poetry: in his portrayal of his relationships with his patron Maecenas and with his larger readership as a whole; in his discussion of the craft of poetry and his own identity as a poet; and in his handling of contemporary Roman political events in the light of his assumed role as critic of his own society. McNeill uncovers the techniques Horace uses to depict the intricacies of his personal existence; in the book's conclusion, he explores how similar techniques were adapted by later poets such as Ovid. This volume will interest scholars of Horace, Latin poetry, rhetoric, as well as those interested in the cultural studies aspect of persona and identity.

Classica et Mediaevalia is an international, peer re¬viewed journal covering the field of the Greek and Latin languages and literature from classical antiq¬uity until the late Middle Ages as well as the Gre¬co-Roman history and traditions as manifested in the general history, history of law, history of philos-ophy and ecclesiastic history. Articles are published mainly in English, but also in French and German. The present issue includes chapters on divination as a convention of war in Classical Greece; pornographic allusions in Catullus; Sophistic oratory and styles in Roman Asia Minor; suspense and surprise in Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon; narrative time and mythological tale-types focusing on Beowulf andOdysseus; and Petrarch’s reading of Cicero’s letters, among others..

Brings the Amores into the forefront of scholarly discussion

Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature introduces individual works of Greek and Latin literature to readers who are approaching them for the first time. Each volume sets the work in its literary and historical context and aims to offer a balanced and engaging assessment of its content, artistry, and purpose. A brief survey of the influence of the work upon subsequent generations is included to demonstrate its enduring relevance and power. All quotations from the original are translated into English. Horace's body of lyric poetry, the Odes, is one of the greatest achievements of Latin literature and a foundational text for the Western poetic tradition. These 103 exquisitely crafted poems speak in a distinctive voice -- usually detached, often ironic, always humane -- reflecting on the changing Roman world that Horace lived in and also on more universal themes of friendship, love, and mortality. In this book, Richard Tarrant introduces readers to the Odes by situating them in the context of Horace's career as a poet and by defining their relationship to earlier literature, Greek and Roman. Several poems have been freshly translated by the author; others appear in versions by Horace's best modern translators. A number of poems are analyzed in detail, illustrating Horace's range of subject matter and his characteristic techniques of form and structure. A substantial final chapter traces the reception of the Odes from Horace's own time to the present. Readers of this book will gain an appreciation for the artistry of one of the finest lyric poets of all time.

Greek and Latin Literature (1969) examines the two ancient literatures using a comparative method that recognizes the links between them – most Latin genres owe something to their Greek forebears. How far was Virgil influenced by Homer, Cicero by Demosthenes, Horace by Sappho and Alcaeus? How far did their techniques differ? How far did they share the same interests? Each contributor to this volume aims to answer such questions.

Traces the developing attitude of poets of the first century BC, considering why they came to write as they did.

This book aims to promote a simple idea: that, in the contemporary context of the study and interpretation of classical literature at universities, traditional classical scholarship and modern theoretical ideas need to work with each other in the common task of the interpretation of texts. Such dialogue and co-operation is not merely desirable; it is essential to ensure the survival and relevance of the study of classical literature in the twenty-first century. The topics selected were chosen by a panel of distinguished practitioners as traditional areas of classical literary studies where the importance of co-operation of theory and scholarship could be shown in different ways by scholars who ranged widely in their views: "literary language," "narrative," "genre," "historicism," and "reception and history of scholarship."

The elegy flared into existence, commanded the cultural stage for several decades, then went extinct. This book accounts for the swift rise and sudden decline of a genre whose life span was incredibly brief relative to its impact. Examining every major poet from Catullus to Ovid, Subjecting Verses presents the first comprehensive history of Latin erotic elegy since Georg Luck's. Paul Allen Miller harmoniously weds close readings of the poetry with insights from theoreticians as diverse as Jameson, Foucault, Lacan, and Zizek. In welcome contrast to previous, thematic studies of elegy--efforts that have become bogged down in determining whether particular themes and poets were pro- or anti-Augustan--Miller offers a new, "symptomatic" history. He asks two obvious but rarely posed questions: what historical conditions were necessary to produce elegy, and what provoked its decline? Ultimately, he argues that elegiac poetry arose from a fundamental split in the nature of subjectivity that occurred in the late first century--a split symptomatic of the historical changes taking place at the time. Subjecting Verses is a major interpretive feat whose influence will reach across classics and literary studies. Linking the rise of elegy with changes in how Romans imagined themselves within a rapidly changing society, it offers a new model of literary theory that neither reduces the poems to a reflection of their context nor examines them in a vacuum.