How is it possible for a poet to find his own individual voice, when he is writing in a tradition so venerable and so constrained by convention as Roman epic? How do poets working in related genres - particularly didactic - conceptualize their relationship to the main epic tradition? The eleven essays in this volume, by leading scholars in the field of Roman poetry and its post-Classical receptions, consider some of the strategies which writers from Lucretius onwards have employed in negotiating their relationship with their literary forebears, and staking out a place for their own work within a tradition stretching back to Hesiod and Homer.

This work offers a theoretical look at Latin didactic poems. It discusses the characteristics that make a poem didactic from the points of view of both theory and literary history, and traces the genre's history, from Hesiod to Roman times.

Here a team of established scholars offers new perspectives on poetic texts of wisdom, learning and teaching related to the great line of Greek and Latin poems descended from Hesiod. In previous scholarship, a drive to classify Greek and Latin didactic poetry has engaged with the near-total absence in ancient literary criticism of explicit discussion of didactic as a discrete genre. The present volume approaches didactic poetry from different perspectives: the diachronic, mapping the development of didactic through changing social and political landscapes (from Homer and Hesiod to Neo-Latin didactic); and the comparative, setting the Graeco-Roman tradition against a wider backdrop (including ancient near-eastern and contemporary African traditions). The issues raised include knowledge in its relation to power; the cognitive strategies of the didactic text; ethics and poetics; the interplay of obscurity and clarity, playfulness and solemnity; the authority of the teacher.

The early modern world was profoundly bilingual: alongside the emerging vernaculars, Latin continued to be pervasively used well into the 18th century. Authors were often active in and conversant with both vernacular and Latin discourses. The language they chose for their writings depended on various factors, be they social, cultural, or merely aesthetic, and had an impact on how and by whom these texts were received. Due to the increasing interest in Neo-Latin studies, early modern bilingualism has recently been attracting attention. This volumes provides a series of case studies focusing on key aspects of early modern bilingualism, such as language choice, translations/rewritings, and the interferences between vernacular and Neo-Latin discourses. Contributors are Giacomo Comiati, Ronny Kaiser, Teodoro Katinis, Francesco Lucioli, Giuseppe Marcellino, Marianne Pade, Maxim Rigaux, Florian Schaffenrath, Claudia Schindler, Federica Signoriello, Thomas Velle, Alexander Winkler.

Before the invention of printing, all forms of writing were done by hand. For a literary text to circulate among readers, and to be transmitted from one period in time to another, it had to be copied by scribes. As a result, two copies of an ancient book were different from one another, and each individual book or manuscript has its own history. The oldest of these books, those that are the closest to the time in which the texts were composed, are few, usually damaged, and have been often neglected in the scholarship. Ancient Latin Poetry Books presents a detailed study of the oldest manuscripts still extant that contain texts by Latin poets, such as Virgil, Terence, and Ovid. Analyzing their physical characteristics, their script, and the historical contexts in which they were produced and used, this volume shows how manuscripts can help us gain a better understanding of the history of texts, as well as of reading habits over the centuries. Since the manuscripts originated in various places of the Latin-speaking world, Ancient Latin Poetry Books investigates the readership and reception of Latin poetry in many different contexts, such schools in the Egyptian desert, aristocratic circles in southern Italy, and the Christian élite in late antique Rome. The research also contributes to our knowledge about the use of writing and the importance of the written text in antiquity. This is an innovative approach to the study of ancient literature, one that takes the materiality of texts into consideration.

Heroism has long been recognised by readers and critics of Roman epic as a central theme of the genre from Virgil and Ovid to Lucan and Statius. However the crucial role female characters play in the constitution and negotiation of the heroism on display in epic has received scant attention in the critical literature. This study represents an attempt to restore female characters to visibility in Roman epic and to examine the discursive operations that effect their marginalisation within both the genre and the critical tradition it has given rise to. The five chapters can be read either as self-contained essays or as a cumulative exploration of the gender dynamics of the Roman epic tradition. The issues addressed are of interest not just to classicists but also to students of gender studies.

This compendium (4 vols.) studies the continuity, flexibility, and variation of structural elements in epic narratives. It provides an overview of the structural patterns of epic poetry by means of a standardized, stringent terminology. Both diachronic developments and changes within individual epics are scrutinized in order to provide a comprehensive structural approach and a key to intra- and intertextual characteristics of ancient epic poetry.

Noted scholars in the field explore the rich variety of late antique literature With contributions from leading scholars in the field, A Companion to Late Antique Literature presents a broad review of late antique literature. The late antique period encompasses a significant transitional era in literary history from the mid-third century to the early seventh century. The Companion covers notable Greek and Latin texts of the period and provides a varied overview of literature written in six other late antique languages. Comprehensive in scope, this important volume presents new research, methodologies, and significant debates in the field. The Companion explores the histories, forms, features, audiences, and uses of the literature of the period. This authoritative text: Provides an inclusive overview of late antique literature Offers the widest survey to date of the literary traditions and forms of the period, including those in several languages other than Greek and Latin Presents the most current research and new methodologies in the field Contains contributions from an international group of contributors Written for students and scholars of late antiquity, this comprehensive volume provides an authoritative review of the literature from the era.

Neither older empiricist positions that genre is an abstract concept, useless for the study of individual works of literature, nor the recent (post) modern reluctance to subject literary production to any kind of classification seem to have stilled the discussion on the various aspects of genre in classical literature. Having moved from more or less essentialist and/or prescriptive positions towards a more dynamic conception of the generic model, research on genre is currently considering "pushing beyond the boundaries", "impurity", "instability", "enrichment" and "genre-bending". The aim of this volume is to raise questions of such generic mobility in Latin literature. The papers explore ways in which works assigned to a particular generic area play host to formal and substantive elements associated with different or even opposing genres; assess literary works which seem to challenge perceived generic norms; highlight, along the literary-historical, the ideological and political backgrounds to "dislocations" of the generic map.