The Poetics of Imitation
Anacreon and the Anacreontic Tradition

This 1992 book explores the complex poetics of imitation which inspired anacreontic composition for so many centuries in antiquity.

Patricia A. Rosenmeyer (Author)

9780521028981, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 November 2006

304 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

"An excellent presentation of an interesting but neglected subject, this work should prove invaluable to students of the classics and Western European literature." Antonía Tripolitis, Religious Studies Review

Western literature knows the anacreontic poems best in the translations or adaptations of such poets as Ronsard, Herrick and Goethe. This collection of poems, once assumed to be the work of Anacreon himself, was considered unworthy of serious attention after the poems were proved to be late Hellenistic and early Roman imitations by anonymous writers. This full-length treatment of the anacreontic corpus, first published in 1992, explores the complex poetics of imitation which inspired anacreontic composition for so many centuries in antiquity. The author reassesses Anacreon's own oeuvre, and then discusses the system of selective imitation practised by the anacreontic poets. The book explores what light the corpus can shed on ancient literary genres, intertextual influences, and the literary manifestations of symposiastic and erotic ideals in a post-classical society which looks back to an archaic model as its guiding force.A full translation of the anacreontic collection is included as an appendix and all Greek and Latin is translated.

List of plates
Acknowledgements
Introduction: the anacreontic question
1. Origins: the role of Anacreon as model
2. Anacreontic imitators: the model revised
3. Reading the texts: a sterile abundance of words
4. The anacreontic anthology
5. The allusive text
Conclusions: Byzantium and beyond
Appendices: A. Repetition in the anacreontics
B. Register of key anacreontic words
C. A translation of the anacreontic poems
Bibliography
Index of passages cited
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]