Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry

Genre, Tradition and Individuality

edited by Monica R. Gale

Book cover: Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry

Extent: 262 pages

Publisher: The Classical Press of Wales

Subjects: Classical Studies, Literary Studies

Series: Roman World

Language: English

(Hardback) (Published)

(December 2004)

ISBN: 9780954384562

6.1 x 9.17 inches

Price: $80.00

In stock

(PDF) (Published)

(December 2004)

ISBN: 9781914535116

Price: $64.00

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.

Acknowledgements Notes on contributors Introduction: Genre, tradition and individuality - Monica Gale PART 1: FRAMING EPICS: EPIC, DIDACTIC AND RELATED GENRES 1. Getting the measure of heroes: The dactylic hexameter and its detractors -Llewelyn Morgan 2. Politian's Ambra and reading epic didactically - Andrew Laird 3. The story of us: A narratological analysis of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura - Monica Gale 4. From didactic to epic: Georgics 2.458 - 3.48 - Damien Nelis PART II: GENRE AND TRADITION: VIRGIL AND AFTER 5. Virgil's Corycius senex and Nicander's Georgica: Georgics 4.116-148 - Stephen Harrison 6. Tradition and originality: Allusion in Valerius Flaccus' Lemnian episode - Ray Clare 7. The repetitions of Hypsipyle - Bruce Gibson 8. Claudian: The epic poet in the prefaces - Catherine Ware PART III: RECEPTIONS: REINVENTING CLASSICAL EPIC 9. Approaching Christian epic: The preface of Juvencus - Roger Green 10. Virgilian imperialism, original sin and Fracastoro's Syphilis - Philip Hardie 11. The Aeneid and twentieth-century Welsh poetry - Ceri Davies Index locorum General index

  • Edited by Monica Gale