Writing Literary History in the Greek and Roman World

The first study of ancient Greek and Roman literary history as a phenomenon on its own terms.

Giacomo Fedeli (Edited by), Henry Spelman (Edited by)

9781009464529, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 June 2024

398 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.6 cm, 0.74 kg

Covering a wide variety of Greek and Latin texts that span from the Archaic period down to Late Antiquity, this volume represents the first concerted attempt to understand ancient literary history in its full complexity and on its own terms. Abandoning long-standing misconceptions derived from the misleading application of modern assumptions and standards, the volume rehabilitates an often neglected but fundamentally important subject: the Greeks' and Romans' representations of the origins and development of their own literary traditions. The fifteen contributors to this volume evince the pervasiveness and diversity of ancient literary history as well as the manifold connections between its manifestations in a variety of texts. Taken as a whole, this volume argues that studying ancient literary history should not only provide insight into the Greek and Roman world but also provoke us to think reflexively about how we go about writing the history of ancient literature today.

List of contributors
Introduction Giacomo Fedeli and Henry Spelman
Part I. Between Literature and Scholarship: 1. Writing the beginnings of Greek literary history Henry Spelman
2. Contrasting pairs and twin graves: companion epigrams and the history of tekhnai Évelyne Prioux
3. Ancient histories of satire(s): Horace as an appropriator, innovator and source Giacomo Fedeli
4. Cicero as a literary historian Elisa Romano
5. Varro and the spirits of Rome's literary past Joseph McAlhany
Part II. Lives and Afterlives: 6. From comedy to literary history Mary Lefkowitz
7. Constructing Virgil and his biography Fabio Stok
8. 'Another X': duplicating poets in ancient Greek literary history Andrea Rotstein
9. Philostratus in verse: poetry and literary history in the Second Sophistic Emma Greensmith
Part III. Narratives of Change
10. Aristotelian teleology in literary criticism: Demetrius, Dionysius and Longinus on the early history of literature Casper de Jonge
11. Progress and decline in Roman perspectives on literary history Mario Citroni
12. The pleasure of the text? Literacy, orality and programmatics in Lucretius Monica R. Gale
13. Plutarch and the history of Greek poetry Richard Hunter
Epilogue
14. The losers' legacy: placing literary fragments in literary history Sandra M. Goldberg
Afterword: an impossible ending? Simon Goldhill
Bibliography
Index of subjects
Index locorum.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1]