Aglaia: The Poetry of Alcman, Sappho, Pindar, Bacchylides, and Corinna

by Charles Segal

Overview

In this landmark collection of essays, renowned classicist Charles Segal offers detailed analyses of major texts from archaic and early classical Greek poetry; in particular, works of Alcman, Mimnermus, Sappho, Pindar, Bacchylides, and Corinna. Segal provides close readings of the texts, and then studies the literary form and language of early Greek lyric, the poets' conception of their aims and their art, the use of mythical paradigms, and the relation of the poems to their social context. A recurrent theme is the recognition of the fragility and brevity of mortal happiness and the consciousness of how the immortality conferred by poetry resists the ever-threatening presence of death and oblivion, fixing in permanent form the passing moments of joy and beauty. This is an essential book for students and scholars of ancient Greek poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742569676
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	11/28/1997
Series:	Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Charles Segal is Walter C. Klein Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. He is the author of many books, including Lucretius on Death and Anxiety (Princeton), Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey (Cornell), and Sophocles' Tragic World: Divinity, Nature, Society (Harvard).

Editorial Reviews

An ordinal introduction and a new essay on Helen in Sappho, Alcaeus, and Ibycus join 15 essays previously published. Segal (classics, Harvard U.) has added some cross-references, corrected some errors, made a few stylistic revisions, translated the Latin and Greek passages, and arranged the essays in chronological and thematic order. The topics include poetry, performance, and society in early Greek literature; the gorgon and the nightingale as voices of female lament in Pindar's twelfth ; and Croesus on the pyre in Herodotus and Bacchylides. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

The book offers a treasured introduction to the power and enduring relevance of her message.

From the Publisher

This volume brings together sixteen scattered articles on Greek lyric poetry by one of the most prolific and respected critics of classical literture in our time.. . .Some of [Segal's] finest work.. . .These essays will reward study by any serious student of Greek lyric.

Thomas K. Hubbard

These four chapters, together with Chaper 6, offer a compelling vision of the structure of the Pindaric ode, firmly rooted in American New Criticism, as well as excellent readings of the individual odes. These essays will continue to be of use for scholars with like or different concerns, both as a record of an influential strand of Pindaric scholarship ( in particular) and as fine examples of the close reading of highly wrought works. As with all books in this Rowman and Littlefield series, the collection is very reasonably priced, and this will ensure the continued dissemination of these essays...

Bryn Mawr Classical Review - Nigel Nicholson