Callimachus in context
Subtitle: from Plato to the Augustan poets
By: Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Susan A. Stephens
Contributors: Stephens, Susan A.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781107008571
Subjects: Appreciation; LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Ancient, Classical & Medieval; Ancient Aesthetics; Criticism and interpretation; Intellectual life
Description: "Scholarly reception has bequeathed two Callimachuses: the Roman version is a poet of elegant non-heroic poetry (usually erotic elegy), represented by a handful of intertexts with a recurring set of images - slender Muse, instructing divinity, small voice, pure waters; the Greek version emphasizes a learned scholar who includes literary criticism within his poetry, an encomiast of the Ptolemies, a poet of the book whose narratives are often understood as metapoetic. This study does not dismiss these Callimachuses, but situates them within a series of interlocking historical and intellectual contexts in order better to understand how they arose. In this narrative of his poetics and poetic reception four main sources of creative opportunism are identified: Callimachus' reactions to philosophers and literary critics as arbiters of poetic authority, the potential of the text as a venue for performance, awareness of Alexandria as a new place, and finally, his attraction for Roman poets"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction: setting the scene; 1. Literary quarrels; 2. Performing the text; 3. Changing places; 4. In my end is my beginning; Conclusion; Appendix: the Aetia.