The invention of literature
Subtitle: from Greek intoxication to the Latin book
By: by Florence Dupont ; translated by Janet Lloyd.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press; The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Baltimore, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 287
Subjects: Classical literature -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc.; Literature and society -- Greece.; Literature and society -- Rome.; Rhetoric, Ancient.; Greece -- Civilization.; Rome -- Civilization.
Description: The invention of literature, writes Florence Dupont, is recent, and its classical ancestry is not firm. Rather than representing solely the remains of a network of readers and writers, the odes, epics, tales, and dramas of Greece and Rome had a much more diversified background and purpose. Some works were intended to be read in groups; other works were not meant to be read at all.

Resisting the traditional temptation to project current tastes and beliefs backward upon Greece and Rome. The Invention of Literature presents classical writings in all their differences. The labor of understanding a lyric or an epic as it was understood in its time requires a radical reconsideration of what reading is and what it means.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [263]-282) and index.