"Cast in Later Grecian Mould", Quintus of Smyrna's Reception of Homer in the Posthomerica

Author: Vincent Edward Tomasso
Publisher: Stanford University
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This dissertation examines the relationship between the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and Quintus of Smyrna's Posthomerica, a 14-book epic of the third century CE. It argues that Quintus bridges the narratives of the Iliad and the Odyssey and redeploys Homeric style in order to re-activate the cultural power of Homer under the Roman Empire. The first chapter analyzes Quintus' depiction of the Muses. The ways in which the goddesses are represented encodes the contemporary conflict of constructing a Greek identity as panhellenic or epichoric in the language of the past. This demonstrates the Posthomerica's deep engagement with the position of Hellenism and its connection to the past. The lack of an opening invocation to the Muses is part of Quintus' strategy for tapping into Homeric power: he connects the Iliad with the Posthomerica but also respects the boundaries of the Homeric text. The second chapter explores how Quintus occasionally draws his audience's gaze away from the primary narrative of the heroic past and towards their own present. This is done through landscapes, a simile involving the arena, Odysseus' testudo maneuver, and Calchas' prophecy about the Roman empire. These passages fuse the two time-frames together, which implicates the past in the construction of the present. In the third chapter specific nodes of intertextuality between the Posthomerica and the Iliad/Odyssey are the primary focus. It is argued that the intertextual web is incomplete, and that the audience must engage their education (paideia) to fill in the narrative gaps. This engages them in creating a Hellenic identity from the narratives of the past with knowledge derived from the present. The fourth chapter contextualizes Quintus with other hexameter poets of the first through fourth centuries CE who treated the Trojan War narrative, including Nestor and Pisander of Laranda, Triphiodorus, and hexameter papyrus fragments.

"Cast in Later Grecian Mould", Quintus of Smyrna's Reception of Homer in the Posthomerica

Author: Vincent Edward Tomasso
Publisher: Stanford University
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This dissertation examines the relationship between the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and Quintus of Smyrna's Posthomerica, a 14-book epic of the third century CE. It argues that Quintus bridges the narratives of the Iliad and the Odyssey and redeploys Homeric style in order to re-activate the cultural power of Homer under the Roman Empire. The first chapter analyzes Quintus' depiction of the Muses. The ways in which the goddesses are represented encodes the contemporary conflict of constructing a Greek identity as panhellenic or epichoric in the language of the past. This demonstrates the Posthomerica's deep engagement with the position of Hellenism and its connection to the past. The lack of an opening invocation to the Muses is part of Quintus' strategy for tapping into Homeric power: he connects the Iliad with the Posthomerica but also respects the boundaries of the Homeric text. The second chapter explores how Quintus occasionally draws his audience's gaze away from the primary narrative of the heroic past and towards their own present. This is done through landscapes, a simile involving the arena, Odysseus' testudo maneuver, and Calchas' prophecy about the Roman empire. These passages fuse the two time-frames together, which implicates the past in the construction of the present. In the third chapter specific nodes of intertextuality between the Posthomerica and the Iliad/Odyssey are the primary focus. It is argued that the intertextual web is incomplete, and that the audience must engage their education (paideia) to fill in the narrative gaps. This engages them in creating a Hellenic identity from the narratives of the past with knowledge derived from the present. The fourth chapter contextualizes Quintus with other hexameter poets of the first through fourth centuries CE who treated the Trojan War narrative, including Nestor and Pisander of Laranda, Triphiodorus, and hexameter papyrus fragments.

"Cast in Later Grecian Mould", Quintus of Smyrna's Reception of Homer

Author: Vincent Edward Tomasso
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This dissertation examines the relationship between the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and Quintus of Smyrna's Posthomerica, a 14-book epic of the third century CE. It argues that Quintus bridges the narratives of the Iliad and the Odyssey and redeploys Homeric style in order to re-activate the cultural power of Homer under the Roman Empire. The first chapter analyzes Quintus' depiction of the Muses. The ways in which the goddesses are represented encodes the contemporary conflict of constructing a Greek identity as panhellenic or epichoric in the language of the past. This demonstrates the Posthomerica's deep engagement with the position of Hellenism and its connection to the past. The lack of an opening invocation to the Muses is part of Quintus' strategy for tapping into Homeric power: he connects the Iliad with the Posthomerica but also respects the boundaries of the Homeric text. The second chapter explores how Quintus occasionally draws his audience's gaze away from the primary narrative of the heroic past and towards their own present. This is done through landscapes, a simile involving the arena, Odysseus' testudo maneuver, and Calchas' prophecy about the Roman empire. These passages fuse the two time-frames together, which implicates the past in the construction of the present. In the third chapter specific nodes of intertextuality between the Posthomerica and the Iliad/Odyssey are the primary focus. It is argued that the intertextual web is incomplete, and that the audience must engage their education (paideia) to fill in the narrative gaps. This engages them in creating a Hellenic identity from the narratives of the past with knowledge derived from the present. The fourth chapter contextualizes Quintus with other hexameter poets of the first through fourth centuries CE who treated the Trojan War narrative, including Nestor and Pisander of Laranda, Triphiodorus, and hexameter papyrus fragments.

Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica

Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica PDF Author: Tine Scheijnen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004380973
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
In Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica. A Study of Heroic Characterization and Heroism, Tine Scheijnen offers a thorough introduction to a late antique Greek epic poem notable for its critical Homer reception and creative (re)construction of Trojan War heroes and heroism.

A Commentary on Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 13

A Commentary on Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 13 PDF Author: Renker, Stephan
Publisher: University of Bamberg Press
ISBN: 3863097394
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The Posthomerica by Quintus of Smyrna, a Greek epic in fourteen books from the 3rd century AD, recounts the story of the Trojan War by covering the events between Hector?s burial and the departure of the Greeks after the destruction of the city. In book 13, we read about the sack of Troy, including famous episodes such as the death of Priam and Astyanax, the enslavement of Andromache, the escape of Aeneas, and the rape of Cassandra.0Stephan Renker offers the first full-scale commentary on Posthomerica 13. He introduces each episode with a discussion of the relevant literary tradition and Quintus' potential models. The following line-by-line commentary yields insights into aspects of language, literary technique, realia, and the main issues of interpretation. Thus, the reader is provided with an important tool for further investigations into this fascinating, yet understudied piece of Imperial Greek poetry.

Later Greek Epic and the Latin Literary Tradition

Later Greek Epic and the Latin Literary Tradition PDF Author: Katerina Carvounis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110791900
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The volume offers an innovative and systematic exploration of the diverse ways in which Later Greek Epic interacts with the Latin literary tradition. Taking as a starting point the premise that it is probable for the Greek epic poets of the Late Antiquity to have been familiar with leading works of Latin poetry, either in the original or in translation, the contributions in this book pursue a new form of intertextuality, in which the leading epic poets of the Imperial era (Quintus of Smyrna, Triphiodorus, Nonnus, and the author of the Orphic Argonautica) engage with a range of models in inventive, complex, and often covert ways. Instead of asking, in other words, whether Greek authors used Latin models, we ask how they engaged with them and why they opted for certain choices and not for others. Through sophisticated discussions, it becomes clear that intertexts are usually systems that combine ideology, cultural traditions, and literary aesthetics in an inextricable fashion. The book will prove that Latin literature, far from being distinct from the Greek epic tradition of the imperial era, is an essential, indeed defining, component within a common literary and ideological heritage across the Roman empire.

Nostalgias for Homer in Greek Literature of the Roman Empire

Nostalgias for Homer in Greek Literature of the Roman Empire PDF Author: Vincent Tomasso
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003821618
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
This volume investigates how versions of Trojan War narratives written in Greek in the first through fifth centuries C.E. created nostalgia for audiences. In ancient education, the Iliad and the Odyssey were used as models through which students learned Greek language and literature. This, combined with the ruling elite’s financial encouragement of re-creations of the Greek past, created a culture of nostalgia. This book explores the different responses to this climate, particularly in the case of the third-century C.E. poet Quintus of Smyrna’s epic Posthomerica. Positioning itself as a sequel to the Iliad and a prequel to the Odyssey, the Posthomerica is unique in its middle-of-the-road response to nostalgia for Homer’s epics. This book contrasts Quintus’ poem with other responses to nostalgia for Homeric narratives in Greek literature of the Roman Empire. Some authors contradict pivotal events of the Iliad and Odyssey, such as the first-century orator Dio Chrysostom’s Trojan Speech, which claims that the Trojan hero Hector did not in fact die, contrary to the Iliad’s account. Others re-created Homeric narratives but did not contradict them, improvising some elements and adding others. Quintus strikes a compromise in his epic, re-imagining Homeric narrative by introducing new characters and scenarios, while at the same time retaining the Iliad and Odyssey’s aesthetics. Nostalgias for Homer in Greek Literature of the Roman Empire is of interest to students and scholars working on Homeric reception and the Greek literature of the Roman Empire, as well as those interested in classical literature and reception more broadly.

The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic

The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic PDF Author: Emma Greensmith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108900356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
This book offers a radically new reading of Quintus' Posthomerica, the first account to combine a literary and cultural-historical understanding of what is the most important Greek epic written at the height of the Roman Empire. In Emma Greensmith's ground-breaking analysis, Quintus emerges as a key poet in the history of epic and of Homeric reception. Writing as if he is Homer himself, and occupying the space between the Iliad and the Odyssey, Quintus constructs a new 'poetics of the interval'. At all levels, from its philology to its plotting, the Posthomerica manipulates the language of affiliation, succession and repetition not just to articulate its own position within the inherited epic tradition but also to contribute to the literary and identity politics of imperial society. This book changes how we understand the role of epic and Homer in Greco-Roman culture - and completely re-evaluates Quintus' status as a poet.

The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception

The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception PDF Author: Marco Fantuzzi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316298213
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 1206

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Book Description
The poems of the Epic Cycle are assumed to be the reworking of myths and narratives which had their roots in an oral tradition predating that of many of the myths and narratives which took their present form in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The remains of these texts allow us to investigate diachronic aspects of epic diction as well as the extent of variation within it on the part of individual authors - two of the most important questions in modern research on archaic epic. They also help to illuminate the early history of Greek mythology. Access to the poems, however, has been thwarted by their current fragmentary state. This volume provides the scholarly community and graduate students with a thorough critical foundation for reading and interpreting them.

The Treatment of Homeric Characters by Quintus of Smyrna

The Treatment of Homeric Characters by Quintus of Smyrna PDF Author: Melvin White Mansur
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Characters and characteristics in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description


The Trojan Epic

The Trojan Epic PDF Author: Quintus of Smyrna
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801892376
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Composed in the third century A.D., the Trojan Epic is the earliest surviving literary evidence for many of the traditions of the Trojan War passed down from ancient Greece. Also known as the Posthomerica, or "sequel to Homer," the Trojan Epic chronicles the course of the war after the burial of Troy's greatest hero, Hektor. Quintus, believed to have been an educated Greek living in Roman Asia Minor, included some of the war's most legendary events: the death of Achilles, the Trojan Horse, and the destruction of Troy. But because Quintus deliberately imitated Homer's language and style, his work has been dismissed by many scholars as pastiche. A vivid and entertaining story in its own right, the Trojan Epic is also particularly significant for what it reveals about its sources—the much older, now lost Greek epics about the Trojan War known collectively as the Epic Cycle. Written in the Homeric era, these poems recounted events not included in the Iliad or the Odyssey. As Alan James makes clear in this vibrant and faithful new translation, Quintus's work deserves attention for its literary-historical importance and its narrative power. James's line-by-line verse translation in English reveals the original as an exciting and eloquent tale of gods and heroes, bravery and cunning, hubris and brutality. James includes a substantial introduction which places the work in its literary and historical context, a detailed and annotated book-by-book summary of the epic, a commentary dealing mainly with sources, and an explanatory index of proper names. Brilliantly revitalized by James, the Trojan Epic will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in Greek mythology and the legend of Troy.