The Dynamics of Intertextuality in Plutarch explores the numerous aspects and functions of intertextual links both within the Plutarchan corpus itself (intratextuality) and in relation with other authors, works, genres or discourses of Ancient Greek literature (interdiscursivity, intergenericity) as well as non-textual sources (intermateriality). Thirty-six chapters by leading specialists set Plutarch within the framework of modern theories on intertextuality and its various practical applications in Plutarch’s Moralia and Parallel Lives. Specific intertextual devices such as quotations, references, allusions, pastiches and other types of intertextual play are highlighted and examined in view of their significance for Plutarch’s literary strategies, argumentative goals, educational program, and self-presentation.

The study of the deliberate allusion by one author to the words of a previous author has long been central to Latin philology. However, literary Romanists have been diffident about situating such work within the more spacious inquiries into intertextuality now current. This 1998 book represents an attempt to find (or recover) some space for the study of allusion - as a project of continuing vitality - within an excitingly enlarged universe of intertexts. It combines traditional classical approaches with modern literary-theoretical ways of thinking, and offers attentive close readings, innovative perspectives on literary history, and theoretical sophistication of argument. Like other volumes in the series it is among the most broadly conceived short books on Roman literature to be published in recent years.

Ancient prose is intriguingly diverse. This volume explores the dynamics of the Latin and Greek prose of the Roman empire in the forms of biography, novel and apologetics which have historically lacked recognition as uncanonical genres, and yet appear vital today. Focusing on the sophistication in thought and artistic texture to be found within these literary kinds, this volume offers a collection of stimulating essays for students and scholars of literature and culture in antiquity - and beyond.

The first holistic study of Roman literature and literary culture under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (AD 96-138). Authors treated include Frontinus, Juvenal, Martial, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch, Quintilian, Suetonius and Tacitus. Key topics and approaches include recitation, allusion, intertextuality, 'extratextuality' and socioliterary interactions.

The poetics of intertextuality proposed in this book, based mainly on semiotics, elucidates factors determining the socio-historically elusive border between general intertextuality and citationality, and explores modes of intertextual representation.

An orator turns to an actor for advice, citizens expect assemblies to unfold like dramas, and a theater-goer cries at a play thinking of his fallen enemy: no Life escapes the mention of theatrical imagery in Plutarch’s paralleled biographies. And yet this is the first book not only to examine Plutarch’s consistent and coherent use of this imagery but also to argue that it is systematically employed to describe, explore, and evaluate politics in action. The theater becomes Plutarch’s invitation for us to question and uncover key moments of Athenian, Spartan, and Roman history as it unfolds.

The volume puts into the spotlight overlaps and points of intersection between Plutarch and other writers of the imperial period. It contains twenty-eight contributions which adopt a comparative approach and put into sharper relief ongoing debates and shared concerns, revealing a complex topography of rearrangements and transfigurations of inherited topics, motifs, and ideas. Reading Plutarch alongside his contemporaries brings out distinctive features of his thought and uncovers peculiarities in his use of literary and rhetorical strategies, imagery, and philosophical concepts, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the empire’s culture in general, and Plutarch in particular.

Plutarch (born before AD 50, died after AD 120) is the ancient author who has arguably contributed more than any other to the popular conception of Sparta. Writing under the Roman Empire, at a time when the glory days of ancient Sparta were already long in the past, Plutarch represents a milestone in Sparta's mythologisation, but at the same time is a vital source for our historical understanding of Sparta. In this volume, eight scholars from around the world come together to consider Plutarch's understanding and presentation of Sparta, his flaws and significance as an historical source, and his development of Sparta as a resonant subject and theme within his bestknown work, the Parallel Lives. This book is the latest in a series which the Classical Press of Wales is publishing on major sources for Sparta. Volumes on Xenophon and Sparta (Powell & Richer 2020) and Thucydides and Sparta (Powell & Debnar 2021) have already been released, and a further volume on Herodotus and Sparta is currently in preparation

This volume addresses the important literary phenomenon of ‘generic enrichment’ in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. It examines the ways in which features of other genres are deployed and incorporated in Plutarch’s biographies and the effects of this on the texts themselves and readers’ responses to them. ‘Generic enrichment’, a term coined by Stephen Harrison with reference to Latin poetry, is used here to refer to the different ways in which a text of one genre might incorporate or evoke features of other genres. The fact that particular Plutarchan biographies may contain not only allusions to specific texts from a variety of genres, but also features such as vocabulary, phraseology, and plot-forms which evoke other genres, has been noticed sporadically by scholars. However, this is the first volume to discuss this feature as a distinct phenomenon across the corpus of Parallel Lives and to attempt an assessment of its effect. Chapters cover the interaction of Plutarchan biography with a series of genres, including archaic poetry, comedy, tragedy, historiography, philosophy, geographical and scientific texts, oratory, inscriptions, novelistic writing and periegetical works. Together these studies demonstrate the generic complexity and richness of Plutarch’s Lives, enhance our understanding of ancient biography in general and Plutarchan biography in particular, and explore the range of effects such generic enrichment might have on readers. Generic Enrichment in Plutarch’s Lives is of interest to students and scholars of Plutarch and ancient biography, as well as to those working in other periods and genres of both Latin and Greek literature, and to those beyond the field of Classical Studies who are interested in questions of genre and literary theory.

Plutarch's Cities is the first comprehensive attempt to assess the significance of the polis in Plutarch's works from several perspectives, namely the polis as a physical entity, a lived experience, and a source of inspiration, the polis as a historical and sociopolitical unit, the polis as a theoretical construct and paradigm to think with. The book's multifocal and multi-perspectival examination of Plutarch's cities - past and present, real and ideal-yields some remarkable corrections of his conventional image. Plutarch was neither an antiquarian nor a philosopher of the desk. He was not oblivious to his surroundings but had a keen interest in painting, sculpture, monuments, and inscriptions, about which he acquired impressive knowledge in order to help him understand and reconstruct the past. Cult and ritual proved equally fertile for Plutarch's visual imagination. Whereas historiography was the backbone of his reconstruction of the past and evaluation of the present, material culture, cult, and ritual were also sources of inspiration to enliven past and present alike. Plato's descriptions of Athenian houses and the Attic landscape were also a source of inspiration, but Plutarch clearly did his own research, based on autopsy and on oral and written sources. Plutarch, Plato's disciple and Apollo's priest, was on balance a pragmatist. He did not resist the temptation to contemplate the ideal city, but he wrote much more about real cities, as he experienced or imagined them.