Authorship and Greek Song is a collection of papers dealing with various aspects of authorship in the song culture of Ancient Greece. In this cultural context the idea of the poet as author of his poems is complicated by the fact that poetry in archaic Greece circulated as songs performed for a variety of audiences, both local and “global” (Panhellenic). The volume’s chapters discuss questions about the importance of the singers/performers; the nature of the performance occasion; the status of the poet; the authority of the poet/author and/or that of the performer; and the issues of authenticity arising when poems are composed under a given poet’s name. The volume offers discussions of major authors such as Pindar, Sappho, and Theognis.

Authorship and Greek Song offers critical discussions of the concept of authorship in archaic Greek poetry. Its chapters explore the issue of authority (of poet-author and/or performer) and the transition from song (performed) to poem (read).

In the wake of recent advances in the treatment of longstanding problems pertaining to the interpretation of Homeric poetry, this volume brings together cutting-edge research from a cohort of acclaimed scholars on Homer and the Homeric Hymns. The variety of topics covered spans the entire field of Homeric philology: the methods and solutions provided for a new edition of the Odyssey, the puzzle of the relation between the festival of the Panathenaea and the Homeric text, the disclosure of the meaning of notorious cruces pertaining to arcane formulas, the two emblematic heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Achilles and Odysseus, Homeric poetics, the range and use of repetition in a traditional medium, the composition of the Homeric epics, the Apologoi and 'Cyclic' Narrative, as well as the Homeric Hymns to Hermes and Aphrodite.

Discover the power of Greek lyric with essays from some of the foremost scholars in the field today Recent decades have seen a strong resurgence of interest in Greek lyric, resulting in this topic becoming one of the most dynamic areas of Classical scholarship. In A Companion to Greek Lyric, renowned Classical scholar Laura Swift delivers a collection of essays by international experts and emerging voices that offers up-to-date approaches on the methodology, contexts, and reception of Greek lyric from the archaic to the Hellenistic period. This edited volume includes detailed analyses of the poets themselves, as well as a reflection of the current state of play in the study of Greek lyric. It showcases the scope and range of approaches to be found in scholarly work in the field. Newcomers to the subject will benefit from the range of contextual and technical information included that allows for a more effective engagement with the lyric poets. Readers will also enjoy: Guidance on working with texts that are mainly preserved as fragments A selection of ways in which lyric poetry has influenced and inspired writers from Rome to the modern era Recommendations for further reading that offer a starting point for how to follow up on a particular topic Perfect for undergraduate and master’s students taking courses on Greek lyric or survey courses on classical literature, A Companion to Greek Lyric also belongs in the libraries of students of English or Comparative Literature seeking an authoritative resource for Greek lyric.

This volume brings together 29 junior and senior scholars to discuss aspects of Hesiod's poetry and its milieu and to explore questions of reception over two and half millennia from shortly after the poems' conception to Twitter hashtags. Rather than an exhaustive study of Hesiodic themes, the Handbook is conceived as a guide through terrain, some familiar, other less charted, examining both Hesiodic craft and later engagements with Hesiod's stories of the gods and moralizing proscriptions of just human behavior. The volume opens with the "Hesiodic Question," to address questions of authorship, historicity, and the nature of composition of Hesiod's two major poems, the Theogony and Works and Days. Subsequent chapters on the archaeology and economic history of archaic Boiotia, Indo-European poetics, and Hesiodic style offer a critical picture of the sorts of questions that have been asked rather than an attempt to resolve debate. Other chapters discuss Hesiod's particular rendering of the supernatural and the performative nature of the Works and Days, as well as competing diachronic and synchronic temporalities and varying portrayals of female in the two poems. The rich story of reception ranges from Solon to comic books. These chapters continue to explore the nature of Hesiod's poetics, as different writers through time single out new aspects of his art less evident to earlier readers. Long before the advent of Christianity, classical writers leveled their criticism at Hesiod's version of polytheism. The relative importance of Hesiod's two major poems across time also tells us a tale of the age receiving the poems. In the past two centuries, artists and writers have come to embrace the Hesiodic stories for themselves for the insight they offer of the human condition but even as old allegory looks quaint to modern eyes new forms of allegory take form.

Pindar-the 'Theban eagle', as Thomas Gray famously called him-has often been taken as the archetype of the sublime poet: soaring into the heavens on wings of language and inspired by visions of eternity. In this much-anticipated new study, Robert Fowler asks in what ways the concept of the sublime can still guide a reading of the greatest of the Greek lyric poets. Working with ancient and modern treatments of the topic, especially the poetry and writings of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), arguably Pindar's greatest modern reader, he develops the case for an aesthetic appreciation of Pindar's odes as literature. Building on recent trends in criticism, he shifts the focus away from the first performance and the orality of Greek culture to reception and the experience of Pindar's odes as text. This change of emphasis yields a fresh discussion of many facets of Pindar's astonishing art, including the relation of the poems to their occasions, performativity, the poet's persona, his imagery, and his myths. Consideration of Pindar's views on divinity, transcendence, time, and the limits of language reveals him to be not only a great writer but a great thinker.

The first study of ancient Greek and Roman literary history as a phenomenon on its own terms.