Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry: Genre, Tradition and Individuality

ISBN-13: 9780954384562 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 286 str.

Monica Gale

Opis

The epic was a daunting genre for Latin poets and audiences alike, with poets well aware that they were part of a tradition in which innovation had to be carefully balanced with the elements laid down by their Greek forbears. These eleven papers, from a conference held in Maynooth in 2000, examine the ways in which Latin authors used the genres of epic and didactic, the reasons for the blurred distinction or margins between the two, and the historical and political context of specific poems. Supported throughout with numerous extracts in Latin and English translation, the contributions discuss the language of epic and didactic, Politian's Ambra, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Virgil's Georgics and works by Valerius Flaccus, Statius, Claudian, Juvencus and, lastly, more recent works, including 20th-century Welsh poetry. Virgilian epic has an absent presence' here; later poets all measured their own work against the Aeneid but no contributor chose to make it their chief subject.