Callimachus was arguably the most important poet of the Hellenistic age, for two reasons: his engagement with previous theorists of poetry and his wide-ranging poetic experimentation. Of his poetic oeuvre, which exceeded what we now have of Theocritus, Aratus, Posidippus, and Apollonius combined, only his six hymns and around fifty of his epigrams have survived intact. His enormously influential Aetia, the collection of Iambi, the Hecale, and all of his prose output have been reduced to a handful of citations in later Greek lexica and handbooks or papyrus fragments. In recent years excellent commentaries and synthetic studies of the Aetia, the Iambi, and the Hecale have appeared or are about to appear. But there is no modern study in English of the collection of hymns. And while there are excellent commentaries in English on three of the hymns (Apollo, Athena, Demeter), the commentaries on Zeus and on Delos are limited in scope, and there is no commentary at all on the Artemis hymn. Synthetic studies in English for the most part treat only one hymn, not the collection, and tend to focus on Callimachus' intertextual relationships with his predecessors and/or his influence on Roman poetry. Yet recent work is requiring scholars to broaden their perspective and to consider Callimachus' religious, civic, and geo-political contexts much more systematically in attempting to understand the hymns. A further incentive is that apart from the Homeric and Orphic hymns, Callimachus' are the only other hymns that have survived intact; those written in earlier periods are now reduced to fragments. For these reasons a study of the six hymns together is a desideratum. An additional reason is that Callimachus' collection of six hymns is very likely to have been an authorially arranged poetry book, quite possibly the earliest such book that we have intact; therefore, it allows a unique perspective on the evolution of the form. This volume offers a text and commentary of all six hymns for advanced students of classics and classical scholars, as well as interpretive essays on each hymn that integrate what has been the dominant paradigm-intertextuality-into a broader focus on Callimachus' context. Her introduction treats the transmission of the hymns, the potential for and likelihood of the Homeric hymns as models, the hymns as a poetry book, their language and meter (especially in light of recent work done on this topic), performance practices, and their relationship to cult, court, local geographies, and panhellenic sanctuaries. For each hymn Stephens presents the Greek text, a translation, and a brief commentary containing important information or parallels for interpretation.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News is a vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family. Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a “head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips,” is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just desserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle’s Point, in a house empty except for a few mementos of the family’s unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives. Newfoundland is a country of coast and cove where the mercury rarely rises above seventy degrees, the local culinary delicacy is cod cheeks, and it’s easier to travel by boat and snowmobile than on anything with wheels. In this harsh place of cruel storms, a collapsing fishery, and chronic unemployment, the aunt sets up as a yacht upholsterer in nearby Killick-Claw, and Quoyle finds a job reporting the shipping news for the local weekly, the Gammy Bird (a paper that specializes in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents). As the long winter closes its jaws of ice, each of the Quoyles confronts private demons, reels from catastrophe to minor triumph—in the company of the obsequious Mavis Bangs; Diddy Shovel the strongman; drowned Herald Prowse; cane-twirling Beety; Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio; a demented cousin the aunt refuses to recognize; the much-zippered Alvin Yark; silent Wavey; and old Billy Pretty, with his bag of secrets. By the time of the spring storms Quoyle has learned how to gut cod, to escape from a pickle jar, and to tie a true lover’s knot.

Experience the beauty and power of ancient Greek poetry with this collection of Callimachus' hymns. Perfect for lovers of classics and literature alike. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

'The Fifth Hymn' is arguably Callimachus' finest surviving poem; it is here printed with its English translation, an introduction and commentary.

This volume offers a text and commentary of all six of Callimachus' hymns, as well as interpretive essays on each hymn that integrate what has been the dominant paradigm--intertextuality--into a broader focus on Callimachus' context.