Tombs of the Ancient Poets: Between Literary Reception and Material Culture

by Nora Goldschmidt (Editor), Barbara Graziosi (Editor)

Overview

Tombs of the Ancient Poets explores the ways in which the tombs of the ancient poets - real or imagined - act as crucial sites for the reception of Greek and Latin poetry. Drawing together a range of examples, it makes a distinctive contribution to the study of literary reception by focusing on the materiality of the body and the tomb, and the ways in which they mediate the relationship between classical poetry and its readers. From the tomb of the boy poet Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, which preserves his prize-winning poetry carved on the tombstone itself, to the modern votive offerings left at the so-called 'Tomb of Virgil'; from the doomed tomb-hunting of long-lost poets' graves, to the 'graveyard of the imagination' constructed in Hellenistic poetry collections, the essays collected here explore the position of ancient poets' tombs in the cultural imagination and demonstrate the rich variety of ways in which they exemplify an essential mode of the reception of ancient poetry, poised as they are between literary reception and material culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192561046
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	09/20/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Nora Goldschmidt is Associate Professor of Classics at Durham University. She is the author of Shaggy Crowns: Ennius' Annales and Virgil's Aeneid (Oxford University Press, 2013) and is currently completing a monograph on fictional biography and the reception of Latin poetry, Afterlives of the Roman Poets: Biofiction and the Reception of Latin Poetry (under contract with Cambridge University Press). Barbara Graziosi is Professor of Classics and Head of Department at Durham University. Her most recent monographs are The Gods of Olympus: A History (Profile Books, 2014) and Homer (Oxford University Press, 2016). She recently completed a major research project, funded by the European Research Council, on visual and narrative portraits of the ancient Greek and Roman poets, entitled Living Poets: A New Approach to Ancient Poetry. This volume stems from that project.

Table of Contents

FrontmatterList of IllustrationsList of AbbreviationsList of Contributors0. Introduction, Nora Goldschmidt and Barbara GraziosiPart I: Material Texts, Textual Materials1. Silent Bones and Singing Stones: Materializing the Poetic Corpus in Hellenistic Greece, Verity Platt2. Simonides on Tombs, and the 'Tomb of Simonides', Richard Rawles3. Ennius' imago between Tomb and Text, Francesca Martelli4. A Portrait of the Poet as a Young Man: The Tomb of Quintus Sulpicius Maximus on the Via Salaria, Valentina Garulli5. Ovid's Tombs: Afterlives of a Poetic corpus, Nora GoldschmidtPart II: The Poet as Character6. Earth, Nature, and the Cult of the Tomb: The Posthumous Reception of Aeschylus' heros, Emmanuela Bakola7. Tombs of the Poets' Minor Characters, Peter Bing8. Still Singing: The Case of Orpheus, Barbara GraziosiPart III: Collecting Tombs9. Poets' Corners in Greek Epigram Collections, Regina Hoschele10. Impermanent Stones, Permanent Plants: Tombs of Poets as Material Objects in the Palatine Anthology, Silvia Montiglio11. Pausanias' Dead Poets Society, Johanna HaninkPart IV: The Tomb of Virgil12. Dead Letters and Buried Meaning: Approaching the Tomb of Virgil, Andrew Laird13. The Tomb of Virgil between Text, Memory, and Site, Irene Peirano Garrison14. Virgil's Tomb in Scholarly and Popular Culture, Harald Hendrix15. Ruins and Reputations: The Tomb of the Poet in Visual Art, Sam SmilesEndmatterBibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Tombs of the Ancient Poets is a balanced and exceptionally accomplished publication, which will serve not only researchers dealing with antiquity but also those interested in the broader topics of "cultural saints" and the literary tradition and its spatiality." — Tomasz Mojsik, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"This is a delight for both the specialist and the general reader." — Cora Beth Knowles, Classics for All

From the Publisher