Matrices of Genre: Authors, Canons, and Society

by Mary Depew, Dirk Obbink

Overview

The literary genres given shape by the writers of classical antiquity are central to our own thinking about the various forms literature takes. Examining those genres, the essays collected here focus on the concept and role of the author and the emergence of authorship out of performance in Greece and Rome.

In a fruitful variety of ways the contributors to this volume address the questions: what generic rules were recognized and observed by the Greeks and Romans over the centuries; what competing schemes were there for classifying genres and accounting for literary change; and what role did authors play in maintaining and developing generic contexts? Their essays look at tragedy, epigram, hymns, rhapsodic poetry, history, comedy, bucolic poetry, prophecy, Augustan poetry, commentaries, didactic poetry, and works that "mix genres."

The contributors bring to this analysis a wide range of expertise; they are, in addition to the editors, Glenn W. Most, Joseph Day, Ian Rutherford, Deborah Boedeker, Eric Csapo, Marco Fantuzzi, Stephanie West, Alessandro Barchiesi, Ineke Sluiter, Don Fowler, and Stephen Hinds. The essays are drawn from a colloquium at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674003385
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	12/30/2000
Series:	Center for Hellenic Studies Colloquia , #4
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mary Depew is Associate Professor of Classics, University of Iowa.

Dirk Obbink is University Lecturer in Papyrology and Greek Literature, Christ Church, Oxford.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Mary Depew and Dirk Obbink

1. Generating Genres: The Idea of the Tragic
Glenn W.Most

2. Epigram and Reader: Generic Force as (Re-)Activation of Ritual
Joseph W.Day

3. Enacted and Represented Dedications: Genre and Greek Hymn
Mary Depew

4. Formulas, Voice, and Death in Ehoie-Poetry, the Hesiodic Gunaikon Katalogos, and the Odysseian Nekuia
Ian Rutherford

5. Herodotus' Genre(s)
Deborah Boedeker

6. From Aristophanes to Menander: Genre Transformation in Greek Comedy
Eric Csapo

7. Theocritus and the Demythologizing of Poetry
Mario Fantuzzi

8. Lycophron's Alexandra: "Hindsight as Foresight Makes No Sense"
Stephanie West

9. Rituals in Ink: Horace on the Greek Lyric Tradition
Alessandro Bar Hiesi

10. The Dialectics of Genre: Some Aspects of Secondary Literature and Genre in Antiquity
Ineke Sluiter

11. The Didactic Plot
Don Fowler

12. Essential Epic: Genre and Gender from Macer to Statius
Stephen Hinds

Notes

Bibliography

Contributors

Index In Memoriam

Don Fowler

Editorial Reviews

This volume consists of a collection of eleven papers on genre and generic definition in Greek and Roman literature. The contributions are divergent in both subject and approach, ranging from seldom considered, even single-instance genres, to the reception of generic traditions in Hellenistic and Roman poetry...The volume contains scholarship of a high standard with stimulating contributions both in the higher and lower genres. It can be recommended to all interested in this apparently flourishing branch of literary analysis.

Scholia Reviews - Philip Bosman

This volume consists of a collection of eleven papers on genre and generic definition in Greek and Roman literature. The contributions are divergent in both subject and approach, ranging from seldom considered, even single-instance genres, to the reception of generic traditions in Hellenistic and Roman poetry...The volume contains scholarship of a high standard with stimulating contributions both in the higher and lower genres. It can be recommended to all interested in this apparently flourishing branch of literary analysis.
— Philip Bosman

Scholia Reviews