Available for the first time in English, this study offers insights into the genesis of German Romanticism.

While ostensibly an examination of classical Greek poetry, Friedrich Schlegel's On the Study of Greek Poetry is a signal document in the development of German Romantic aesthetics. In it, Schlegel outlines the development of classical and post-classical cultures, showing clearly that an entirely new mode of cultural production is necessary. On the Study of Greek Poetry has been at the center of the discussions of German Romanticism by German scholars such as Peter Szondi and Manfred Frank, and this translation makes an important text in the genesis of German Romanticism available for the first time in English. The book also includes a critical introduction as well as annotations that elucidate Schlegel's numerous allusions.

Brilliantly applying insights and methodologies from anthropology, literary theory, and the social sciences to the historical study of archaic lyric, Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece, winner of Italy's prestigious Viareggio Prize, develops a new Picture of the literary history of Greece. An essentially practical art, ancient Greek poetry was clocely linked to the realities of social and political life and to the actual behavior of individuals within a community. Its mythological content was didactic and pedagogical. But Greek poetry differs radically from modern forms in its mode of communication: it was designed not for reading but for performance, with musical accompaniment, before an audience. In analyzing the formal and social aspects of this performance context, Gentili illuminates such topics as oral composition and improvisation, oral transmission and memory, the connections betweek poetry and music, the changing socioeconomic situation of the artist, and the relations among poets, patrons, and the public.

Lyric Poetry and Social Identity in Archaic Greece examines how Greek men presented themselves and their social groups to one another. The author examines identity rhetoric in sympotic lyric: how Greek poets constructed images of self for their groups, focusing in turn on the construction of identity in martial-themed poetry, the protection of group identities in the face of political exile, and the negotiation between individual and group as seen in political lyric. By conducting a close reading of six poems and then a broad survey of martial lyric, exile poetry, political lyric, and sympotic lyric as a whole, Jessica Romney demonstrates that sympotic lyric focuses on the same basic behaviors and values to construct social identities regardless of the content or subgenre of the poems in question. The volume also argues that the performance of identity depends on the context as well as the material of performance. Furthermore, the book demonstrates that sympotic lyric overwhelmingly prefers to use identity rhetoric that insists on the inherent sameness of group members. All non-English text and quotes are translated, with the original languages given alongside the translation or in the endnotes.

The Greek lyric, elegiac and iambic poets of the two centuries from 650 to 450 BCE produced some of the finest poetry of antiquity. This new poetic translation captures the nuances of meaning and the whole spirit of this poetry.

Genre in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetryforegrounds innovative approaches to the question of genre, what it means, and how to think about it for ancient Greek poetry and performance. Embracing multiple definitions of genre and lyric, the volume pushes beyond current dominant trends within the field of Classics to engage with a variety of other disciplines, theories, and models. Eleven papers by leading scholars of ancient Greek culture cover a wide range of media, from Sappho's songs to elegiac inscriptions to classical tragedy. Collectively, they develop a more holistic understanding of the concept of lyric genre, its relevance to the study of ancient texts, and its relation to subsequent ideas about lyric.

This book contains a selection of pagan Greek poetic texts ranging in date from the first to the sixth century AD. It makes easily accessible for the first time work by poets such as Quintus Smyrnaeus, Nonnus, Musaeus and Babrius hitherto neglected in Classical syllabuses. Genres represented include epic, epyllion, didactic, epigram, lyric and the verse fable. There is a brief general introduction, and in addition each section of detailed commentary is prefaced by a discussion of literary aspects of the poems and of their wider contexts. The book is intended primarily for undergraduate and graduate students of Greek, but will be of interest also to Classical scholars.