Brills Companion To Prequels Sequels And Retellings Of Classical Epic

Brill’s Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic explores the long tradition of continuing Greek and Roman epics from Homer and the epic cycle to the contemporary novels of Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood.

A study of the literary reception of the love-story of Hero and Leander and its popularity from classical times to the present in different genres, from epigram to epic, and including drama, opera, burlesques and modern experimental works.

Building the Canon through the Classics. Imitation and Variation in Renaissance Italy (1350-1580) explores the multiple facets of the formation of the literary canon in Renaissance Italy through the analysis of its complex relationship with the Classics.

Provides the first literary and cultural-historical analysis of the most important third-century Greek epic, Quintus' Posthomerica.

Roman imperial epic is enjoying a moment in the sun in the twenty-first century, as Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus have all been the subject of a remarkable increase in scholarly attention and appreciation. Lucan and Flavian epic characterizes and historicizes that moment, showing how the qualities of the poems and the histories of their receptions have brought about the kind of analysis and attention they are now receiving. Serving both experienced scholars of the poems and students interested in them for the first time, this book offers a new perspective on current and future directions in scholarship.

In Ilias Latina. Text, Interpretation, and Reception, the contributors approach this short poem, whose appeal and importance have not been sufficiently appreciated, from a multitude of scholarly perspectives. The challenging synthesis of the different issues shows that both a new edition and a modern literary interpretation of the poem are needed. Particularly focusing in various ways on the technique of vertere, the papers concern four main issues: the different elements of the narration, such as macro- and microstructure, single Bauformen and motifs, characters and scenes; the intertextual allusions to Homer and the texts of the Roman poetic tradition; the literary genre, the explicitly metaliterary passages and the implicit narrative and poetic choices; the medieval reception of the Ilias Latina.

This is the first volume to explore the commentaries on ancient texts produced and circulating in Byzantium. It adopts a broad chronological perspective (from the twelfth to the fifteenth century) and examines different types of commentaries on ancient poetry and prose within the context of the study and teaching of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and science. By discussing the exegetical literature of the Byzantines as embedded in the socio-cultural context of the Komnenian and Palaiologan periods, the book analyses the frameworks and networks of knowledge transfer, patronage and identity building that motivated the Byzantine engagement with the ancient intellectual and literary tradition.

This compendium (4 vols.) studies the continuity, flexibility, and variation of structural elements in epic narratives. It provides an overview of the structural patterns of epic poetry by means of a standardized, stringent terminology. Both diachronic developments and changes within individual epics are scrutinized in order to provide a comprehensive structural approach and a key to intra- and intertextual characteristics of ancient epic poetry.

Book 9 of Silius Italicus' first-century Latin epic poem Punica begins the narrative of the Battle of Cannae (August 216 BC). This book is an integral part of the epic's three-book movement that narrates one of the largest battles in Roman history. It opens with the dispute between the consuls Paulus and Varro over giving battle, in the face of hostile omens and Hannibal's record of successful combat. On the eve of the battle, the Roman soldier Solymus accidentally kills his father Satricus, thereby presenting an omen of disaster for the Roman army. After Hannibal and Varro encourage their troops, the initial phase of the battle commences. The gods descend to the battlefield, and Mars and Minerva fight the sole full-scale theomachy in Latin epic. Aeolus summons the Vulturnus wind at Juno's request to devastate the Roman ranks. After the gods have departed, Hannibal's elephant troops advance and scatter the Roman forces. The book ends by recapitulating the opening episode: Varro admits his mistake in giving battle and flees the battlefield. This volume is the first full-scale commentary in English devoted exclusively to Punica 9. It features the Latin text with a critical apparatus and a parallel English translation. Detailed commentary notes provide information on literary style, use of language, poetic intertexts, and scholarly interpretation. The Introduction offers further context and background, including sections on Silius Italicus and his era, the historiographic and rhetorical traditions that he adopted, the inter- and intra-textuality of the Cannae episode, and the book's use of diction and metre.

"Brill's Companion to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity presents a comprehensive account of the afterlife of the Homeric corpus. Twenty chapters written by a range of experts in the field show how Homeric poems were transmitted, disseminated, adopted, analysed, admired or even criticized across diverse intellectual environments, from the 3rd century BCE to the 6th century CE. The volume explores the impact of Homer on Hellenistic prose and poetry, the Second Sophistic, the Stoics, some Christian writers and the major Neoplatonists, showing how the Greek paideia continued to flourish in new contexts. Contributors are: Gianfranco Agosti, John Dillon, Mark Edwards, Christos Fakas, Jeffrey Fish, Luis Arturo Guichard, Malcolm Heath, Ronald E. Heine, Lawrence Kim, Robert Lamberton, Jane L. Lightfoot, Enrico Magnelli, Antony Makrinos, Diotima Papadi, Robert J. Penella, Aglae Pizzone, Ilaria Ramelli, Anne Sheppard, Georgios Tsomis, Cornelia van der Poll, Sarah Klitenic Wear"--