The aim of this book is to devise a method for approaching the
problem of presence in Hellenistic and Roman poetry. The problem of
presence, as defined here, is the problem of the availability or
accessibility to the reader of the fictional worlds disclosed by
poetry. From Callimachus' Hymns to the Odes of Horace, poets of
this era repeatedly challenge readers by beckoning them to explore
fictive spaces which are at once familiar and otherworldly, realms
of the imagination which are nevertheless firmly rooted in the
lived reality of the poets and their contemporaries. We too, when
we read these poems, may feel simultaneously a sense of being
transported to a world apart and of being seized upon by the poem's
address in the here and now of reading. The fiction of occasion is
proposed as a new conceptual tool for understanding how these poems
produce such problematic presences and what varieties of experience
they make possible for their readers. The fiction of occasion is
defined as a phenomenon whereby a poem is fictionally framed as
part of a material event or 'occasion' with which the reader is
invited to engage through the medium of the senses. The book
explores this concept through close readings of key authors from
the corpus of first-person poetry written in Greek and Latin
between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE, with a focus on
Callimachus, Bion, Catullus, Propertius, and Horace. The ultimate
purpose of these readings is to move towards developing a new
vocabulary for conceptualising ancient poetry as an embodied
experience.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!