Preposterous Poetics: The Politics and Aesthetics of Form in Late Antiquity

by Simon Goldhill

Overview

How does literary form change as Christianity and rabbinic Judaism take shape? What is the impact of literary tradition and the new pressures of religious thinking? Tracing a journey over the first millennium that includes works in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, this book changes our understanding of late antiquity and how its literary productions make a significant contribution to the cultural changes that have shaped western Europe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108797023
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/16/2021
Series:	Greek Culture in the Roman World
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College. He is one of the best-known writers on Greek literature and cultures, publishing almost twenty books and numerous articles on texts and topics from the whole span of antiquity and its reception, especially in the Victorian era. He has broadcast regularly on television and radio around the world, and has been profiled in newspapers from Brazil to Australia. His books have won three international prizes and been translated into ten languages.

Table of Contents

1. Forms of attention: time and narrative in Ecphrasis; 2. When size matters: erotics, the epyllion, and Colluthus' Rape of Helen; 3. In the beginning; 4. Preposterous poetics and the erotics of death; 5. Strange dogs: Joseph and Aseneth and the dynamics of transformation; 6. Life forms: biography and rabbinical writing coda; Acknowledgements; Bibliography. Index.

Editorial Reviews

‘A playful book, brimming with merriment in its stories and curiousities.’ Kate Cooper, The Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher