Academic literature on the topic 'Ancient greek poetry - literary criticism'
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Journal articles on the topic "Ancient greek poetry - literary criticism"
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Wright, Matthew. "The tragedian as critic: Euripides and early Greek poetics." Journal of Hellenic Studies 130 (November 2010): 165–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0075426910000066.
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AbstractThis article examines the place of tragic poetry within the early history and development of ancient literary criticism. It concentrates on Euripides, both because his works contain many more literary-critical reflections than those of the other tragedians and because he has been thought to possess an unusually ‘critical’ outlook. Euripidean characters and choruses talk about such matters as poetic skill and inspiration, the social function of poetry, contexts for performance, literary and rhetorical culture, and novelty as an implied criterion for judging literary excellence. It is argued that the implied view of literature which emerges from Euripidean tragedy is both coherent and conventional. As a critic, Euripides, far from being a radical or aggressively modern figure (as he is often portrayed), is in fact distinctly conservative, looking back in every respect to the earlier Greek poetic tradition.
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Frendo, Mario. "Ancient Greek Tragedy as Performance: the Literature–Performance Problematic." New Theatre Quarterly 35, no. 1 (January 16, 2019): 19–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x18000581.
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In this article Mario Frendo engages with the idea of ancient Greek tragedy as a performance phenomenon, questioning critiques that approach it exclusively via literary–dramatic methodologies. Based on the premise that ancient Greek tragedy developed within the predominantly oral context of fifth-century BCE Greece, he draws on Hans-Thies Lehmann's study of tragedy and its relation to dramatic theatre, where it is argued that the genre is essentially ‘predramatic’. Considered as such, ancient Greek tragedy cannot be fully investigated using dramatic theories developed since early modernity. In view of this, Walter J. Ong's caution with respect to the rational processes produced by generations of literate culture will be acknowledged and alternative critiques sought, including performance criticism and performance-oriented frameworks such as orality, via which Frendo traces possible critical trajectories that would allow contemporary scholarship to deal with ancient tragedy as a performance rather than literary phenomenon. Reference will be made to Aristotle's use of the term ‘poetry’, and how performance criticism may provide new insight into how the Poetics deals with one of the earliest performance phenomena in the West. Mario Frendo is lecturer of theatre and performance and Head of the Department of Theatre Studies at the School of Performing Arts, University of Malta, where he is director of CaP, a research group focusing on links between culture and performance. His research interests include musicality in theatre, ancient tragedy, and relations between philosophical thought and performance.
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Skarbek-Kazanecki, Jan. "The Ancient Greek Symposion as Space for Philosophical Discourse: Xenophanes and Criticism of the Poetic Tradition." Tekstualia 1, no. 8 (September 15, 2022): 3–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0015.9904.
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The aim of the present article is to discuss relations between archaic Greek philosophy and poetry through the example of Xenophanes of Colophon (sixth century BCE), the poet best known for a critique of traditional religion using anthropomorphic imagery. The initial problem lies in understanding the performative aspect in Xenophanes’ elegiac poems; analysis of fragments 1W and 2W has revealed that his literary output can be situated within the framework of the aristocratic symposium. This sympotic context determines the second question: how the poetic fragments fi t with those compositions in which Xenophanes attacks traditional beliefs and poetic ideas of Homer and Hesiod. As I suggest, the critique of traditional mythical narratives, and undermining other poets’ authority, can be interpreted as an expression of performative practices functioning at symposia of the archaic and classical epochs. By removing the division between “philosophy” and “poetry”, different aspects of Xenophanes’ fragments begin to coincide with the phenomenon of the ancient symposium, understood as a space for intellectual competition.
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Skarbek-Kazanecki, Jan. "Greek symposion as a space for philosophical discourse: Xenophanes and criticism of the poetic tradition." Tekstualia 1, no. 56 (July 21, 2019): 35–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0013.3286.
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The aim of the present article is to discuss the relation between the philosophy and poetry in archaic Greece on the example of Xenophanes of Colophon (6th century BC), the poet best known for a critique of anthropomorphic imagery of the traditional religion. The initial problem lies in understanding the performative aspect of the elegiac poems of Xenophanes; analysis of the fragment 1W and 2W has revealed that the Xenophanes’ literary output can be situated within the framework of the aristocratic symposium. This sympotic context determines the second question, wiz. how the poetic fragments fi t with the Xenophanes’ compositions in which he attacks the traditional beliefs and poetic ideas of Homer or Hesiod. The particular focus has been on the fragments of elegies that are presumed to belong to the collection named Sylloi: as the author has suggested, the critique of traditional mythical narratives, as well as undermining the authority of other poets, can be interpreted as an expression of performative practices functioning at the symposia of the archaic and classical epochs. By removing the division between the „philosophy” and „poetry”, the different aspects of Xenophanes’ fragments start to coincide with the phenomenon of ancient symposium, understood as a space for the intellectual competition.
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Vardi, Amiel D. "Diiudicatio locorum: Gellius and the history of a mode in ancient comparative criticism." Classical Quarterly 46, no. 2 (December 1996): 492–514. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cq/46.2.492.
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Comparison of literary passages is a critical procedure much favoured by Gellius, and is the main theme in several chapters of his Noctes Atticae: ch. 2.23 is dedicated to a comparison of Menander's and Caecilius′ versions of the Plocium; 2.27 to a confrontation of passages from Demosthenes and Sallust; in 9.9 Vergilian verses are compared with their originals in Theocritus and Homer; parts of speeches by the elder Cato, C. Gracchus and Cicero are contrasted in 10.3; two of Vergil's verses are again compared with their supposed models in ch. 11.4; a segment of Ennius′ Hecuba is contrasted with its Euripidean original in 13.27; Cato's and Musonius′ formulations of a similar sententia are confronted in 16.1; in 17.10 Vergil's description of Etna is compared to Pindar's; the value of Latin erotic poetry is weighed against the Greek in ch. 19.9, in which an Anacreontean poem and four Latin epigrams are cited; and finally in 19.11 a ‘Platonic' distich is set side by side with its Latin adaptation, composed by an anonymous friend of Gellius, though in this case no comparison of the poems is attempted.
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Moula, Evangelia E., and Konstantinos D. Malafantis. "Homer’s Odyssey: from classical poetry to threshold graphic narratives for dual readership." Journal of Literary Education, no. 2 (December 6, 2019): 52. http://dx.doi.org/10.7203/jle.2.13779.
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This article’s focus is some unconventional adaptations of the Odyssey in graphic language, belonging to the threshold literary field and contextualized in different historical and cultural milieus. Since ancient Greek literature in general and Homer in particular, ceased to be considered as sacred scripts, they discarded the centuries-long formalistic and idealistic approach and served as a vehicle for criticism or as a mirror of each receiving culture’s present. The kind of relation established between each adaptation and its pre-text is defined by the inscribed meta-narratives in its body. The graphic adaptations under discussion, countercultural, demystifying or even subversive, participate in the so called “cross-audience phenomenon”, addressing a dual readership, both children and adults. They aim at undermining the heroic ethos, provoking skepticism and criticizing allusively the contemporary politics. They also trivialize the original by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. This way they facilitate dialogue between past and present, by creating a contact zone within which pluralism is the major trait.
Key words: The Odyssey, classics’ reception, comic book adaptations, threshold literature, pluralism
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Kaya, Nilay. "Ekphrastic Expression of Western Painting and Cultural In-Betweenness in Evliyâ Çelebi’s Seyahatnâme (The Book of Travels)." Culture and Dialogue 10, no. 2 (November 29, 2022): 143–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/24683949-12340118.
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Abstract Ekphrasis, a part of the ancient Greek and Roman rhetorical practices, is, in its most basic sense, the verbal expression of a visual object. Since the description of Achilles’ shield in Homer’s Iliad, ekphrasis has been a literary practice used for the portrayal of visual artworks through fiction and poetry, as well as in prose written in history, art criticism and travelogues. Ekphrasis is a convenient literary tool for analysing the author’s treatment of the object depicted. Ekphrastic studies enable the identification of the author’s relationship with objectivity and subjectivity, and the building blocks of the said subjectivity, through literary elements. What kind of fictional language does ekphrasis, which is essentially the act of making the mute object speak, point to, in Evliya Çelebi’s representation? This article will aim to examine the subjective factors, personal taste and cultural positioning that emerge in Evliyâ Çelebi’s writing practice, mainly in his “ekphrastic” narration of the Western paintings that he saw in the Balkans and Vienna, which he describes in great detail in his Seyahatnâme. It is of the author’s opinion that, although Evliyâ Çelebi’s cultural positioning imposed limitations on his aesthetic perception and ekphrastic narration, he had an admiration for the Western art; and his “actual” cultural position manifests itself in an “in-betweenness” in the East-West spiral, which also reflects his unique literary mode.
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Nilova, Anna. ""POETICS" OF ARISTOTLE IN RUSSIAN TRANSLATIONS." Проблемы исторической поэтики 19, no. 4 (December 2021): 7–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.15393/j9.art.2021.9822.
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The article presents an overview of the existing translations of Aristotle's “Poetics”, characterizes the features of each of them. In the preface to his translation of Aristotle's “Poetics”, V. Zakharov characterized the work of the Greek philosopher as a “dark text.” Each translation of this treatise, which forms the basis of European and world literary theory, is also its interpretation, an attempt to interpret the “dark places.” The first Russian translation of “Poetics” was made by B. Ordynsky and published in 1854, however, the Russian reader was familiar with the contents of the treatise through translations into European languages and its expositions in Russian. For instance, in the “Dictionary of Ancient and New Poetry” Ostolopov sets out the Aristotelian theory of drama and certain other aspects of “Poetics” very close to the original text. Ordynsky translated the first 18 chapters of “Poetics”, focusing on the theory of tragedy. The translator presented his interpretation of Aristotle’s concept in an extensive preface, commentaries and a lengthy “Statement.” This translation set off a critical analysis by Chernyshevsky, and influenced his dissertation “Aesthetic relations of art to reality”, in which the author polemicizes with the aesthetics of German romanticism. In 1885 V. Zakharov published the first complete Russian translation of “Poetics”, in which he offered his own interpretation of Aristotle's teaching on language and epic. The author of this translation returns to the terminology of romantic aesthetics, therefore the translation itself is outside the main line of perception of the teachings of Aristotle by domestic literary theory, which is clearly manifested in the translations of V. G. Appelrot (1893), N. N. Novosadsky (1927) and M. L. Gasparov (1978). The subject of discussion in these translations was the interpretation of the notions of μῦϑος and παθος, the concepts of mimesis and catharsis, the source of suffering and the tragic, the possibility of modernizing terminology. An important milestone in the perception and assimilation of Aristotle's treatise by Russian literary criticism was its translation by A. F. Losev, which was not published, but was used by the author in his theoretical works and in criticizing other interpretations of “Poetics”. M. M. Pozdnev penned one of the last translations of “Poetics” (2008). The translator does not seek to preserve the peculiarities of the original style and interprets “Poetics” within the framework and terms of modern literary theory, focusing on its English translations. The main subject of the translator's reflection is Aristotle's understanding of the essence and phenomenon of poetic art. Translations of the Greek philosopher's treatise reflect the history of the formation and development of the domestic theory of literature, its main topics and terminological apparatus.
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Chiżyńska, Katarzyna. "Recenzja książki: René Nünlist , The ancient critic at work. Terms and concepts of literary criticism in Greek Scholia, Cambridge University Press, New York 2009, s. 459." Collectanea Philologica 15 (January 1, 2012): 113–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/1733-0319.15.11.
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In this volume are included two flattering reviews, first of Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek scholarship: a guide to finding, reading and understanding scholia, commentaries, lexica and grammatical treatises, from their beginnings to the Byzantine period (New York 2007) and the second of René Nünlist, The ancient critic at work. Terms and concepts of literary criticism in Greek scholia (New York 2009). Both reviewed works focuses on Greek scholarship and are very helpful for modern scholars with understanding ancient literary criticism and reading scholia. Scientists rarely use Greek commentaries, because of their technical and philological difficulties, especially because of particular writing and vocabulary, used by scholiasts. There are very few works concerning this theme, so any new published results of researches this kind is priceless. Moreover both reviewed works are of highest scientific level.
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Chiżyńska, Katarzyna. "Recenzja książki: Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek scholarship: a guide to finding, reading and understanding scholia, commentaries. lexica and grammatical treatises, from their beginnings to the Byzantine period, Oxford University Press, New York 2007, s. 362." Collectanea Philologica 15 (January 1, 2012): 109–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/1733-0319.15.10.
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In this volume are included two flattering reviews, first of Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek scholarship: a guide to finding, reading and understanding scholia, commentaries, lexica and grammatical treatises, from their beginnings to the Byzantine period (New York 2007) and the second of René Nünlist, The ancient critic at work. Terms and concepts of literary criticism in Greek scholia (New York 2009). Both reviewed works focuses on Greek scholarship and are very helpful for modern scholars with understanding ancient literary criticism and reading scholia. Scientists rarely use Greek commentaries, because of their technical and philological difficulties, especially because of particular writing and vocabulary, used by scholiasts. There are very few works concerning this theme, so any new published results of researches this kind is priceless. Moreover both reviewed works are of highest scientific level.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Ancient greek poetry - literary criticism"
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Mérot, Guillemette. "Le « canon » des poètes grecs et latins de l’Institution oratoire. : Discours critique, traditions doctrinales, contexte culturel." Thesis, Sorbonne université, 2020. http://accesdistant.sorbonne-universite.fr/login?url=http://theses.paris-sorbonne.fr/2020SORUL084.pdf.
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La thèse porte sur le « canon » (au sens de « liste des auteurs considérés comme les meilleurs au sein d’un genre donné ») des poètes grecs et latins du chapitre 10.1 de l’Institution oratoire. Dans ce traité de rhétorique de l’époque flavienne, la liste-canon est issue d’une tradition littéraire et doctrinale qui sélectionne certains auteurs à inclure et les évalue les uns par rapport aux autres pour en faire des supports de lecture et des modèles d’éloquence. Le présent travail envisage la liste d’auteurs du chapitre 10.1 à la fois comme le point d’aboutissement d’un processus de constitution de « canons » effectué en diachronie et, en synchronie, comme une émanation du contexte culturel propre à la Rome flavienne. Il interroge sa dynamique de constitution en expliquant les motivations qui sous-tendent différentes opérations de « mise en liste » (sélection – ou exclusion – des auteurs, établissement entre eux de relations de hiérarchisation, et évaluation critique de leurs qualités). Il montre que les principales influences critiques qui s’exercent sur les différentes notices de la liste sont celles de Cicéron, d’Horace et de Denys d’Halicarnasse. Nous montrons notamment que cette dynamique de constitution de la liste est propre à chaque genre poétique. Notre travail entend s’inscrire ainsi au confluent de l’histoire de la rhétorique et de ses doctrines, de l’histoire de la philologie, de l’histoire littéraire et de l’histoire de la critique littéraire ancienneThis thesis deals with the "canon" (in the sense of "list of authors considered the best within a given genre") of Greek and Latin poets in chapter 10.1 of the Institutio oratoria. In this treatise on rhetoric from the Flavian period, the canon-list derives from a literary and doctrinal tradition that selects certain authors for inclusion and evaluates them in relation to each other as reading material and models of eloquence. The present work describes the list of authors in chapter 10.1 both as the culmination of a diachronous process of establishing "canons", and, in synchrony, as an emanation of the cultural context specific to Flavian Rome. It questions the dynamic of how the list was established by explaining the motivations behind different operations of "listing" (selection - or exclusion - of authors, establishment of hierarchical relations between them, and critical evaluation of their qualities). It shows that the main critical influences on the different entries in the list are those of Cicero, Horace and Denys of Halicarnassus. In particular, its show that the dynamics of how the list was established is specific to each poetic genre. Accordingly, the present work is located at the confluence of the history of rhetoric and its doctrines, the history of philology, literary history, and the history of ancient literary criticism
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Paleou, Matrona. "Literary criticism, poetry and ideological commitment : C.P. Cavafy and the Greek Left ( 1950-1974)." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.529793.
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Meijering, Roos. "Literary and rhetorical theories in Greek scholia." Groningen : E. Forsten, 1987. http://books.google.com/books?id=YXtfAAAAMAAJ.
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Boeke, Hanna. "Wisdom in Pindar : gnomai, cosmology and the role of the poet." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/50549.
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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2005ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates the cosmological context of Pindar' s victory odes, and its importance for their encomiastic purpose. The introductory chapter deals with selected aspects of Pindaric scholarship in order to establish the usefulness of such an investigation. The first part of the study focuses on gnomai as a reflection of cosmological ideas. In Chapter 2 modem scholarship on the proverb and maxim, various ancient texts on gnomai and a number of references in Pindar are analysed in support of the contention that gnomai provide a legitimate basis for an overview of the cosmology revealed in Pindars poetry. The overview presented in Chapter 3 discusses three broad topics. The first concerns the elemental forces, fate, god and nature, the second deals with the human condition and the third considers man in society from the perspectives of the household and family relationships on the one hand and relationships outside the OtKOs on the other. The overview suggests that Pindar's work is founded on a mostly conventional outlook on man and his relationships with both extra-human powers and his fellow man. To complement the overview three epinikia, Olympian 12, Isthmian 4 and Olympian 13 are analysed in Chapter 4. They demonstrate how the complexity of an actual situation compels the poet to emphasise different aspects of the cosmology or even to suggest variations to accepted views. The analyses imply that presenting the cosmological context of a particular celebration in an appropriate way is part of the poet's task. This aspect is further investigated in Chapter 5, which looks at the role of the poet as mediator of cosmology. In some cases the poet demonstrates certain preferred attitudes which in tum presuppose particular cosmological convictions. In others this role involves changing the perspective on the circumstances or attributes of a victor or his family through a modification of cosmological principles. Different approaches to the same theme in different poems show the author Pindar shaping the narrator-poet to represent varying viewpoints in order to praise a specific victor in the manner most suitable to his wishes and circumstances. The fact that the poet's task includes situating the victory in its cosmological context means that the glorification of a victor includes presenting him as praiseworthy in terms of broader life issues, such as the role of the divine in human achievement, a man's attitude to success and his status in society. Pindar's use of cosmological themes in general speaks of pragmatism rather than conformity to and the consistent defense of a rigid framework of values. However, the prominence of cosmology in the odes and the sometimes very conspicuous role of the poet in communicating it also reveal Pindar's abiding interest in man and his position in the world
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie ondersoek die kosmologiese konteks van Pindaros se oorwinningsodes, en die belangrikheid daarvan vir die gedigte as prysliedere. Die inleidende hoofstuk behandel geselekteerde aspekte van Pindaros-navorsing om die nut van so 'n ondersoek te bepaal. Die eerste deel van die studie fokus op gnomai as 'n bron van kosmologiese idees. In hoofstuk 2 word moderne navorsing oor spreekwoorde en wysheidspreuke, verskeie antieke tekste oor gnomai en 'n aantal verwysings in Pindaros se werk ontleed ter ondersteuning van die stand punt dat gnornai 'n redelike grondslag bied vir 'n oorsig van die kosmologie wat in Pindaros se digkuns na vore kom. Die oorsig aangebied in hoofstuk 3 bespreek drie bree onderwerpe, eerstens die fundamentele magte, die noodlot, god en die natuur, tweedens die menslike toestand en derdens die mens in die samelewing uit die hoek van die huishouding en familieverhoudings enersyds en verhoudings buite die OtKOs ; andersyds. Die oorsig dui aan dat Pindaros se werk gebaseer is op 'n hoofsaaklik konvensionele uitkyk op die mens en sy verhoudings met beide buite-menslike magte en sy medemens. Ter aanvulling van die oorsig word drie oorwinningsodes, Olimpiese Ode 12, lsmiese Ode 4 en Olimpiese Ode 13 in hoofstuk 4 ontleed. Die ontledings toon aan hoe die kompleksiteit van 'n gegewe situasie die digter verplig om verskillende aspekte van die kosmologie te beklemtoon of selfs afwykings van aanvaarde menings voor te stel. Die ontledings impliseer dat dit deel van die digter se taak is om die kosmologiese konteks van 'n spesifieke viering op die gepaste wyse aan te bied. Hierdie aspek word verder ondersoek in hoofstuk 5, waarin die rol van die digter as bemiddelaar van kosmologie bekyk word. In sommige gevalle demonstreer die digter sekere voorkeurhoudings wat op hulle beurt spesifieke kosmologiese oortuigings veronderstel. In ander gevalle behels hierdie rol die verandering van die perspektief op die omstandighede of eienskappe van 'n oorwinnaar of sy familie deur die modifisering van kosmologiese beginsels. Verskillende benaderings tot dieselfde tema in verskillende gedigte wys hoe die outeur Pindaros die vertellerdigter vorm om wisselende standpunte te verteenwoordig sodat 'n spesifieke wenner op die mees geskikte manier in ooreenstemming met sy wense en omstandighede geprys kan word. Die feit dat die digter se taak die plasing van die oorwinning in sy kosmologiese konteks insluit, beteken dat die verheerliking van 'n wenner insluit dat hy voorgestel word as lofwaardig kragtens breer lewenskwessies, soos byvoorbeeld die rol van die goddelike in menslike prestasie, 'n mens se houding tot sukses en sy status in die gemeenskap. Oor die algemeen spreek Pindaros se gebruik van kosmologiese temas van pragmatisme eerder as onderwerping aan en die volgehoue verdediging van 'n rigiede stel waardes. Die belangrikheid van kosmologie in die odes en die soms besonder opvallende rol van die digter in die kommunikasie daarvan openbaar egter ook Pindaros se blywende belangstelling in die mens en sy plek in die wereld.
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Samaras, Peter Panagiotis. ""Eros tyrannidos" : a study of the representations in Greek lyric poetry of the powerful emotional response that tyranny provoked in its audience at the time of tyranny's earliest appearance in the ancient world." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=24104.
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Since its earliest appearance, the word $ tau upsilon rho alpha nu nu acute iota varsigma$ referred to absolute rule obtained in defiance of any constitution that existed previously. In early Greek lyric poetry, tyranny is represented as a divine blessing, but one that meets with opposition against the tyrant and puzzlement at the behaviour of the gods. In Archilochus and elsewhere tyrannical ambition is termed eros. The common property that makes both tyranny and beauty objects of eros is luminosity: As the 'radiance' $ rm( lambda alpha mu pi rho acute o tau eta varsigma)$ of beauty is to the lover, so the 'splendour' $ rm( lambda alpha mu pi rho acute o tau eta varsigma)$ of tyranny is to the tyrannical "lover". The major symbol of tyrannical luminosity is gold. Conspicuous use of wealth and women contributed to the visibility of tyrannical splendour.
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Stoll, Daniel. "The Aesthetics of Storytelling and Literary Criticism as Mythological Ritual: The Myth of the Human Tragic Hero, Intertextual Comparisons Between the Heroes and Monsters of Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Exodus." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2020. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/577.
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For thousands of years, people have been hearing, reading, and interpreting stories and myths in light of their own experience. To read a work by a different author living in a different era and setting, people tend to imagine works of literature to be something they are not. To avoid this fateful tendency, I hope to elucidate what it means to read a work of literature and interpret it: love it to the point of wanting to foremost discuss its excellence of being a piece of art. Rather than this being a defense, I would rather call it a musing, an examination on two texts that I adore: Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Exodus
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Geisz, Camille H. "Storytelling in late antique epic : a study of the narrator in Nonnus of Panopolis' Dionysiaca." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7b323af8-0512-407e-8aed-a0a7970a49ef.
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This thesis is a narratological study of Nonnus of Panopolis' Dionysiaca, focussing on the figure of the narrator whose interventions reveal much about his relationship to his predecessors and his own conception of story-telling. Although he presents himself as a follower of Homer, whom he mentions by name in his poem, the Dionysiaca are clearly influenced by a much wider range of sources of inspiration. The study of narratological interventions brings to light the narrator's relationship with Homer, between imitation and innovation. The way he renews and transforms epic narratorial devices attests to his literary skills as he strives for ποικιλία in his poem. His interventions hint at sources of inspiration other than Homer, such as lyric poetry, historiography, and didactic epic. Another innovation is the way the narrator intervenes not to draw the narratee's attention to the contents of his text, but to underline his own role as story-teller. Some interventions signal a change in tone or the integration of another genre; the expected proems and invocations to the Muse become spaces for a display of ingeniousness, a discussion of the sources and a reflection on the role of the poet. The efforts made by the Nonnian narrator to renew well known devices also denotes his mindfulness of his narratee, whom he involves in the story through metaleptic devices, or by drawing on a shared cultural background to enhance the narrative with allusions to extradiegetic references. The study of narratorial interventions proves that the Dionysiaca were not written only in an attempt to recreate a Homeric epic, but are a compendium of influences, genres, and myths, encompassing the influence of a thousand years of Greek literature.
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Demerliac, Oriane. "Le locus de la mer chez les poètes augustéens : miroir et creuset des mutations poétiques, politiques et morales du début du Principat." Thesis, Lyon, 2019. http://www.theses.fr/2019LYSEN066.
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Pour montrer la richesse des représentations poétiques de la mer, l’époque augustéenne constitue un moment clef. Avec la bataille d’Actium, la mer occupe une place nouvelle à Rome et devient un enjeu majeur, lieu de victoires et de pouvoir dans le discours d’Auguste et dans l’imaginaire romain, à un moment de refondation aussi bien politique que morale de la cité après les guerres civiles. C’est la manière dont cet objet s’est constitué en tant que catalyseur de toutes les grandes mutations de l’époque augustéenne qui retient notre attention. Nous étudions la mer comme locus, c’est-à-dire comme un objet poétique susceptible de refléter ou de modifier le lieu réel où l’activité humaine se déploie durant l’histoire grecque et romaine, mais aussi les représentations socioculturelles. Dans notre première partie, nous entreprenons une comparaison des rapports à la mer chez les Grecs et les Romains, dans leur histoire, leurs mentalités et leur littérature. Il apparaît que d’un point de vue axiologique, si la mer des poètes augustéens reçoit un traitement négatif en grande partie influencé par la poésie grecque, ce motif est enrichi d’un élément inédit : la condamnation de la navigation. Reliée aux guerres et à la luxuria, elle s’inspire chez les poètes augustéens d’une synthèse entre les influences de la philosophie grecque et de la morale traditionnelle : elle devient le lieu d’expression des passions humaines, depuis la cupidité jusqu’à la colère du Prince. Mais les poètes augustéens ont aussi été sensibles à l’héritage grec du motif épique de la mer : Virgile, dans l’Énéide, élabore à partir des modèles grecs un héroïsme nouveau, adapté à l’arrière-plan culturel romain, où prime la pietas, dans des errances où les épreuves maritimes sont systématiquement désamorcées. Ovide, dans ses Métamorphoses, relit Virgile pour déconstruire cette mer de la fabrique des héros et proposer une nouvelle représentation de la mer, miroir de la Pax Augusta. Pourtant, c’est l’élégie qui, en transférant toute ses ambiguïtés au locus marin, en fait le mieux le miroir troublant des changements politiques et des mutations morales que connaît Rome au début du Principat : la réélaboration élégiaque du motif épique de la mer est l’occasion du questionnement et de la réaffirmation des valeurs du mos maiorum, d’expérimentations génériques et surtout de la construction d’un nouvel héroïsme en mer, celui d’Auguste à ActiumTo show the richness of the poetic representations of the sea, the Augustan epoch is considered a key period. With the battle of Actium, the sea holds a new place in Rome and becomes a major stake, place of victories and power in the speech of Augustus and in the Roman imagination, during a political and moral city rebuilding after the civil wars. It is the way this object was established as a catalyst of all the great changes of the Augustan period that holds our attention. We study the sea as locus, that is to say as a poetic object likely to reflect or modify the real place where the human activity spreads out during the Greek and Roman history, but also the socio-cultural representations. In our first part, we undertake a comparison of the relationships with the sea for Greeks and Romans, in their history, their mentalities and their literature. It appears that from an axiological point of view, if the sea of Augustan poets receives a negative treatment as in Greek poetry, this pattern is enriched by a previously unseen element: the navigation condemnation. Linked with war and luxuria, it is inspired for the Augustan poets by a synthesis between the influences of Greek philosophy and traditional morality: it becomes the place of expression of the human passions, from greed to anger of the Prince. But the Augustan poets have also carried the Greek heritage of the epic motif of the sea Virgil, in the Aeneid, develops from the Greek models a new heroism, adapted to the Roman cultural background, where the pietas takes the central part through wanderings where sea trials are systematically undone. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, rereads Virgil to deconstruct this sea of heroes and to build a new representation of the sea, mirror of the Pax Augusta. However, the elegy, as the most ambiguous genre, introduces the most original and complex vision of the marine locus. Elegiac poets makes it the most disturbing mirror of the political changes and moral mutations that Rome experienced at the beginning of the Principate: the elegiacre-elaboration of the epic motif of the sea is an opportunity to question and reaffirm the values of the mos maiorum, generic experiments and especially the construction of a new heroism at sea, that of Augustus to Actium
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Sze, Gillian. "The erring archive in Anne Carson." Thèse, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/12451.
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L’archive erronée dans l’œuvre d’Anne Carson enquête sur les effets que peuvent entraîner l’archive classique sur la poésie d’Anne Carson et révèle que le travail de cette dernière est issu de l’espace situé entre la critique et la créativité, ce qui génère ce qu’on appellera une « poétique de l’erreur ». La poésie de Carson se démarque par sa prédilection pour les accidents, les imperfections et les impondérables de la transmission. La présente dissertation émerge des attitudes critiques ambivalentes face à la dualité de l’identité de Carson, autant poète qu’universitaire, et leur offrira une réponse. Alors que l’objectif traditionnel du philologue classique est de reconstruire le sens du texte « original », l’approche poétique de Carson sape en douce les prétentions universitaires d’exactitude, de précision et de totalisation. La rencontre de Carson avec l’archive classique embrasse plutôt les bourdes, les mauvaises lectures et les erreurs de traduction inhérentes à la transmission et à la réception de traductions classiques.
La poésie de Carson est ludique, sexuée et politique. Sa manière de jouer avec l’épave du passé classique torpille la patri-archive, telle que critiquée par Derrida dans Mal d’Archive ; c’est-à-dire cette archive considérée comme un point d’origine stable grâce auquel s’orienter. De plus, en remettant en question la notion de l’archive classique en tant qu’origine de la civilisation occidentale, Carson offre simultanément une critique de l’humanisme, en particulier au plan de la stabilité, du caractère mesurable et de l’autonomie de « l’homme ». L’archive, pour Carson, est ouverte, en cours et incomplète ; les manques linguistiques, chronologiques et affectifs de l’archive classique représentent ainsi des sources d’inspiration poétique.
La présente dissertation étudie quatre dimensions de l’archive classique : la critique, la saphique, l’élégiaque et l’érotique. Grâce à ces coordonnées, on y établit le statut fragmentaire et fissuré du passé classique, tel que conçu par Carson. Si le fondement classique sur lequel la culture occidentale a été conçue est fissuré, qu’en est-il de la stabilité, des frontières et des catégories que sont le genre, la langue et le texte ? L’ouverture de l’archive critique de manière implicite les désirs de totalité associés au corps du texte, à la narration, à la traduction et à l’érotisme.
En offrant une recension exhaustive de sa poétique, L’archive erronée dans l’œuvre d’Anne Carson tente d’analyser l’accueil hostile qu’elle a subi, contribue à renforcer la documentation sans cesse croissante dont elle fait l’objet et anticipe sa transmutation actuelle de médium et de genre, sa migration de la page à la scène.The Erring Archive in Anne Carson investigates the responsiveness of Anne Carson’s poetry to the classical archive and argues that Carson works from within the space between the critical and the creative, generating what I call a “poetics of error.” Carson’s poetics is distinguished by a predilection for accidents, imperfections, and the contingencies of transmission. My dissertation also responds to and emerges from the ambivalent critical attitudes to Carson’s dual identity as both a scholar and a poet. While the traditional aim of the classical philologist is to reconstruct the meaning of the “original” text, Carson’s poetic approach self-consciously undermines scholarly pretensions to accuracy, precision, and totalization. Rather, Carson’s encounter with the classical archive embraces the mistakes, misreadings, and mistranslation inherent in classical transmission and reception. Carsonian poetics is ludic, gendered, and political. Her play with the wreckage of the classical past undermines the patri-archive, as critiqued by Derrida in Archive Fever; that is, an archive that is considered to be a stable, governing point of origin. Furthermore, by challenging the notion of the classical archive as the origin of Western civilization, Carson simultaneously offers a critique of Humanism, particularly the stability, measurability, and autonomy of “Man.” The archive, for Carson, is open, ongoing, and incomplete; the linguistic, temporal, and affective gaps of the classical archive are thus opportunities for poetic production. My dissertation examines four dimensions of the classical archive: the critical, the sapphic, the elegiac, and the erotic. By means of these coordinates, I establish the fragmentary and ruptured status of the classical past, as conceived by Carson. If the classical bedrock upon which Western culture has been conceived is fractured, what does this mean for the stability, borders, and categories of genre, language, and the text? The openness of the archive implicitly critiques related desires of totality associated with the textual body, narrative, translation, and Eros. The Erring Archive in Anne Carson is keen to analyze Carson’s own vexed reception and contributes to growing Carsonian scholarship, as it provides a comprehensive entry into her poetics and anticipates her current generic and media shift from the page to the stage.
Books on the topic "Ancient greek poetry - literary criticism"
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Bartol, Krystyna. Greek elegy and iambus: Studies in ancient literary sources. Poznań, Polska: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, 1993.
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E, Gerber Douglas, ed. A companion to the Greek lyric poets. Leiden: Brill, 1997.
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Michael, Schmidt. The first poets: Lives of the ancient Greek poets. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004.
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Plutarch, Keaney John J, and Lamberton Robert, eds. Essay on the life and poetry of Homer. Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press, 1996.
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Année, Magali. Tyrtée et Kallinos: La diction des anciens chants parénétiques (édition, traduction et interprétation). Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017.
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1952-, Doherty Lillian Eileen, ed. Homer's Odyssey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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Johnson, Claudia D. Understanding the Odyssey: A student casebook to issues, sources, and historic documents. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2003.
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Franz, Michael. Von Gorgias bis Lukrez: Antike Ästhetik und Poetik als vergleichende Zeichentheorie. Berlin: Akademie, 1999.
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Acosta-Hughes, Benjamin. Callimachus in context: From Plato to the Augustan poets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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Antimachus. Antimachus of Colophon: Text and commentary. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Ancient greek poetry - literary criticism"
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"The imaginative poet: Aeschylus’ phantasiai in ancient literary criticism." In Approaches to Greek Poetry, 287–314. De Gruyter, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110631883-013.
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Nightingale, Andrea. "Mimesis: ancient Greek literary theory." In Literary Theory and Criticism, 37–47. Oxford University PressOxford, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199291335.003.0002.
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Abstract The discipline of literary criticism did not exist until literature itself came into being. This occurred when poetic and verbal artworks—originally performed orally—were encoded in written texts. In the Western tradition, this took place in ancient Greece, in the sixth and fifth centuries bce. Literacy spread very slowly in Classical Greece, and the primary medium of communication remained oral up to the end of the fourth century. Gradually, the Greeks began to inscribe their great poems in written texts, and in the fifth and fourth centuries developed the art of prose literature. In this period, most written texts functioned as scripts for performance; but, for the educated élite, written texts took on a life of their own: these individuals began to read and evaluate literature in the privacy of their homes, outside the realm of public performance. Verbal artworks thus became literature, and this, in turn, led to literary criticism.
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Fearn, David. "The Allure of Narrative in Greek Lyric Poetry." In Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece, 36–58. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198848295.003.0003.
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This chapter concerns itself with Greek lyric’s attention to its own allure, through an exploration of the tension between absorption into the narrativity of lyric’s worlds, on the one hand, and, on the other, attentiveness to lyric’s exposition of the artifice and ornamentation of language, and of the intertextualities that constitute the building blocks of lyric narrative. Building on accounts of lyric, literary allure, and literary narrative in recent work in comparative literature as well as hin Classics, the chapter explores the experience of narrative across a diverse range of Greek lyric texts—Stesichorus, Bacchylides, Anacreon, and Pindar—and assesses the range of effects produced and complexities entailed while also drawing out what seems to be distinctively lyrical about all these examples of Greek lyric’s attitudes towards narrative.
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Bishop, Caroline. "Conclusion." In Cicero, Greek Learning, and the Making of a Roman Classic, 301–10. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198829423.003.0008.
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After a brief summary of the book’s argument, the conclusion turns to a consideration of how successful Cicero was in shaping his own reception as a classic. The ancient reception of Cicero’s poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, and oratory are all briefly outlined, and it is shown that the works in which Cicero evoked Greek models were among his most successful. This is because Roman literary criticism and scholarship had a powerful tendency to mimic the methods of Greek literary criticism and scholarship, and authors who had themselves mimicked Greek models were easy targets for this approach. A comparison is drawn between the ancient reception of Cicero and the ancient reception of Vergil, and the conclusion closes with the suggestion that the bids for classical immortality made by the Augustan poets (Vergil, Horace, Ovid) were modelled in part on Cicero’s successful construction of himself as a classic.
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Too, Yun Lee. "From Criticism to Self-Censorship, from Republic to Empire." In The Idea of Ancient Literary Criticism, 151–86. Oxford University PressOxford, 1999. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198150763.003.0006.
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Abstract It is possible to write a narrative of literary criticism which stresses the continuities between the Greek critical enterprise and the Roman one. The texts I have examined up to this point show that critical activity in the sense of a process of literary discrimination and Judgement is the norm rather than the exception where ancient communities are concerned. In the pre-Roman period, literary criticism is an activity that is imposed from outside upon the process of literary production by leaders, legislators, and their representatives and from within by the very authors who participate in the production of literary material. In the case of Plato and Aristotle, it is the writers of literary texts who themselves attempt to constrain the work of other authors, while the Alexandnan Mouseion-Library endeavours to formalize literary norms and ideals which the critic-poets also enact in their own work. Working from this background, this chapter seeks to demonstrate that this activity is not one confined to Hellenic culture. It examines the specificities of criticism in the Roman period in particular, to show how they articulate ideals of discursive order and constraint both around and against a rehistoricized Greek past and shifting contemporary political ideals.
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Hardwick, Lorna. "Introduction." In Greek and Roman Antiquity in First World War Poetry, 1–22. Oxford University PressOxford, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198907879.003.0001.
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Abstract The Introduction provides extensive material that illustrates and explains the aims of the book and the ideas and concepts used in it. It summarizes the historical and literary contexts that shaped the poetry of the First World War, discusses the choice of poets and poems and explains the categories that are used in the detailed commentaries to analyse the range of connections between ancient and modern texts and their literary mediations in the centuries between. Key terms are glossed and the poetry of unease and the poetry of survival are identified as key themes. The discussion of the historical context includes examination of class, education, and social attitudes as well as the impact of war service. The place of religion in the literary language and cultural perspectives of the poets is considered, especially in relation to notions of suffering and sacrifice, as well as of conflict and vengeance. The various types of paramaterial that can inform analysis of texts, literary biographies, and life experience are discussed. The Introduction also sets out the relationship between the book and classical reception scholarship, including its potential for enhancing understanding of the place of war poetry in the development of the public imagination and the cultural memory and for contributing to eco-criticism and trauma studies.
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Dover, K. J. "Classical science and philosophy." In Ancient Greek Literature, 105–21. Oxford University PressNew York, NY, 1997. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192892942.003.0007.
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Abstract In the last few centuries the province of philosophy has been substantially reduced, since science has increasingly offered means, founded upon observation, calculation, and experiment, of answering questions to which at one time only a variety of purely speculative answers could be offered. We do not now ask a philosopher how the solar system originated or why certain plants do better in sandy soil, though we might invite his criticism of the reasoning and conceptual relations involved in scientific answers to those questions. Greeks of the archaic and classical periods whose curiosity was aroused by questions about the origin, constituents, and working of the universe did not have at their disposal, and could not readily envisage, those technical means of satisfying curiosity which our own civilization has developed. They inherited poetry (Hesiod’s, for example) which narrated the origins of the universe in terms of personified entities, such as Earth, Sky, and Night, who mated and pro created, and they explained its mechanical regularities, notably the course of the Sun and the chain of phenomena dependent upon it, in terms of laws made by Zeus and obeyed by subordin ate deities. The essential first step which was to lead both to scientific and to philosophical thought was taken when certain Greeks in the first half of the sixth century B.c. devised economic al and comprehensive theories intended to explain the origin and the working of the universe by reference not to the actions of deities but to the properties of supposed ‘basic elements’ such as air, fire, water, and earth. The earliest thinkers known to have put written work into circulation are Anaximander and Anaximenes, both natives of Miletus; they wrote in prose, but the very scanty surviving quotations do not tell us anything about its literary quality.
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Tsouna, Voula. "Philodemus on the Therapy of Vice." In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 233–58. Oxford University PressOxford, 2001. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199248780.003.0007.
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Abstract Philodemus of Gadara (c.I I0-<7-40 Be), the Greek Epicurean philosopher, migrated to Italy at a relatively early age, placed himself under the patronage of the Roman patrician Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, and founded a flourishing Epicurean community at Herculaneum. He is a near contemporary of Cicero, Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace and, although the nature and extent of his influence on each of these authors is a matter of ongoing discussion, there is significant evidence that he was known to most of them, both in person and through his writings. Fragments of his works, which survive in the charred papyri of the so-called Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, show him to be an intellectual of impressive range and talent. His elegant epigrams circulated from Italy to Roman Egypt, while his prose compositions targeted sma11er and varying audiences. Their subjects include poetics and literary theory, literary criticism, aesthetics, rhetoric, poetic theology, and philosophy of religion, as well as logic, epistemology, philosophical psychology, and ethics. In all these domains, Philodemus has much to contribute to the discussions of the ancients, as well as to our own.
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Hopkins, David. "Introduction: Reception as Conversation." In Conversing with Antiquity, 1–36. Oxford University PressOxford, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199560349.003.0001.
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Abstract The classical past is a pervasive presence in English poetry from the early Middle Ages to the present day, and particularly in the centuries which are the main concern of the present volume. Many of the most prominent English poetic forms – epic, verse-tragedy, ode, formal satire, elegy, pastoral, verse-epistle – derive from classical precedent. English writers have regularly invoked what they took to be the assumptions and criteria of ancient literary criticism. And a long line of English poets has devoted substantial energy and practised artistry to the direct translation of Greek and Latin verse, a topic which will be a central concern of this book. Thus, when the late Philip Larkin remarked that ‘to me the whole of classical and biblical mythology means very little, and I think that using them today not only fills poems full of dead spots but dodges the writer’s duty to be original’,1 he was giving voice, in a deliberately provocative manner, to sentiments that he knew to be unrepresentative even of such well- known contemporaries as W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, let alone of the great poets of the past. English writers, to be sure, had often noted the dangers of excessive or injudicious use of classical material, or expressed more open hostility to classical influences.
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McLaughlin, Kevin. "“Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin”." In The Philology of Life, 15–41. Fordham University Press, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9781531501686.003.0002.
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This chapter focuses on two essays composed by Walter Benjamin during his student years (1914–1915) in the wake of the suicide of his friend Fritz Heinle at the outbreak of World War I. It begins with Benjamin’s essay “The Life of Students,” which reveals the influence of Nietzschean Lebensphilosophie (the philosophy of life) and Henri Bergson’s theory of time, and it goes on to consider his first great work of literary criticism, “Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin.” The main focus of this chapter is Benjamin’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s proposition on the “sobriety” of ancient Greek art that confronts the modern poet as expressed in what became the poem “Timidity.”
Conference papers on the topic "Ancient greek poetry - literary criticism"
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Sun, Li. "Zhou Zuoren' Translation of Japanese and Ancient Greek Poetry and Forming of the Literary Thought of Chinese Vernacular Prose." In Proceedings of the 2017 5th International Education, Economics, Social Science, Arts, Sports and Management Engineering Conference (IEESASM 2017). Paris, France: Atlantis Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.2991/ieesasm-17.2018.53.
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