A Stanford University Press classic.

This book examines how Gwendolyn Brooks, a self-proclaimed nonreligious person, advocates adherence to Christian ideals through religious allusions in her poetry. The discussion integrates Brooks' words, biographical data, commentary by other scholars, scriptural references, and doctrinal tenets. It identifies biblical figures and events and highlights Brooks' effective use of the sermon genre, and her express parallels between Christianity and Democracy. The work opens with a biographical chapter and Brooks' comments on religion, followed by analyses of her long poems, and more than thirty of her short ones. An illuminating interview with Nora Brooks Blakely about Brooks' religious background and philosophy is included.

The study of the deliberate allusion by one author to the words of a previous author has long been central to Latin philology. However, literary Romanists have been diffident about situating such work within the more spacious inquiries into intertextuality now current. This 1998 book represents an attempt to find (or recover) some space for the study of allusion - as a project of continuing vitality - within an excitingly enlarged universe of intertexts. It combines traditional classical approaches with modern literary-theoretical ways of thinking, and offers attentive close readings, innovative perspectives on literary history, and theoretical sophistication of argument. Like other volumes in the series it is among the most broadly conceived short books on Roman literature to be published in recent years.

The role of poetic allusion in classical Greek poetry, to Homer especially, has often largely been neglected or even almost totally ignored. This book, first published in 1990, clarifies the place of Homer in Greek education, as well as adding to the interpretation of many important tragedies. Focussing on the dramatic masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and how these writers imitated and alluded to other poetry, the author reveals the immense dependence on Homer which can be seen throughout the corpus of Attic tragedy. It is argued that the practice of the art of allusion indicates certain conventions in fifth-century Athenian education, and perhaps also suggests something in the way of public, political, and historical self-awareness. Invaluable to anyone interested in the reception of Homer in the classical age, and to students of comparative literature and linguistic theory.

Christopher Ricks is among the best known living critics. His third collection of essays, several newly written for this book, is strongly focused on the theme of how writers--especially but not exclusively poets--make use of other writers' work: from the subtle courtesies of different kinds of allusion to the extreme discourtesy of plagiarism.

A consideration of the allusive poetry of Ovid based on the philosophy of Martin Buber