The Poet's Voice
Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature

Invaluable guide to ancient Greek literature and literary theory through the representation of poetry and the figure of the poet.

Simon Goldhill (Author), Emma Greensmith (Foreword by)

9781009478212, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 June 2024

424 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.7 cm, 0.76 kg

'These essays present a sophisticated picture of poetry's relationship to its culture, arguing that, for example, the praise tradition is not simply one of similarity but also of difference.' Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Professor of Comparative Literature Emerita, Hamilton College

How are poetry and the figure of the poet represented, discussed, contested within the poetry of ancient Greece? From what position does a poet speak? With what authority? With what debts to the past? With what involvement in the present? Through a series of interrelated essays on Homer, lyric poetry, Aristophanes, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes, this landmark volume discusses key aspects of the history of poetics: tale-telling and the representation of man as the user of language; memorial and praise; parody, comedy and carnival; irony, masks and desire; the legacy of the past and the idea of influence. Detailed readings of major works of Greek literature and liberal use of critical writings from outside Classics help to align modern and ancient poetics in enlightening ways. This revised edition contains a substantial new Introduction which engages with critical and scholarly developments in Greek literature since the original publication.

Foreword
Preface
Introduction: Sounding Out The Poet's Voice
1. The poet hero: language and representation in the Odyssey
2. Intimations of immortality: fame and tradition from Homer to Pindar
3. Comic inversion and inverted commas: Aristophanes and parody
4. Framing, polyphony and desire: Theocritus and Hellenistic poetics
5. The paradigms of epic: Apollonius Rhodius and the example of the past
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1]