Talking Books Readings in Hellenistic and Roman Books of Poetry [Hardcover]

Increasing importance is being attached to how Greek and Latin books of poems were arranged, but such research has often been carried out with little attention to the physical fragments of actual ancient poetry-books. In this extensive study Gregory Hutchinson investigates the design of Greek and Latin books of poems in the light of papyri, including recent discoveries. A series of discussions of major poems and collections from two central periods of Greek and Latin literature is framed by a substantial and illustrated survey of poetry-books and reading, and by a more theoretical discussion of structures involving books. The main poets discussed are Callimachus, Apollonius, Posidippus, Catullus, Horace, and Ovid; a chapter on Latin didactic includes Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, and Manilius.

1. Doing Things with Books
2. The Aetia: Callimachus' Poem of Knowledge
3. Hellenistic Epic and Homeric Form
4. The New Posidippus and Latin Poetry
5. The Catullan Corpus, Greek Epigram, and the Poetry of Objects
6. The Publication and Individuality of Horace's Odes Books 1-3
7. Horace and Archaic Greek Poetry
8. Ovid, Amores 3: The Book
9. The Metamorphosis of Metamorphosis: P. Oxy. 4711 and Ovid
10. Structuring Instruction: Didactic Poetry and Didactic Prose
11. Books and Scales

. . .Timely and wide-ranging. . . This rich and eye-opening book, which all scholars of ancient poetry will want to read, will surely stimulate further talk.
--Religious Studies Review

G. O. Hutchinson is Professor of Greek and Latin Languages and Literature in the University of Oxford.