Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond

Knowledge, Power, Tradition

edited by Lilah Grace Canevaro and Donncha O'Rourke

Book cover: Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond

Extent: 280 pages

Publisher: The Classical Press of Wales

Subjects: Classical Studies, Literary Studies

Series: Greece, Rome, & Beyond

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(December 2019)

ISBN: 9781910589793

Price: $78.00

In stock

PDF (Published)

(December 2019)

ISBN: 9781910589915

Price: $62.00

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).


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.

  • Edited by Lilah Grace Canevaro
  • Edited by Donncha O’Rourke