Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus

In Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus, Christopher Faraone discusses a number of short hexametrical genres such as oracles, incantations and laments that do not easily fit the generic models provided by the extant poetry of Hesiod and Homer. In the process, he gives us new insight into their ritual performance, their early history, and how poets from Homer to Theocritus embedded or imitated these genres to enrich their own hexametrical poems--by playing with and sometimes overturning the generic expectations of their audiences or readers.

Christopher Faraone combines literary and ritual studies to produce a rich and detailed picture of hexametrical genres performed publicly for gods, such as hymns or laments for Adonis, or other that were performed more privately, such as epithalamia, oracles, or incantations. This volume deals primarily with the recovery of lost or under-appreciated hexametrical genres, which are often left out of modern taxonomies of archaic hexametrical poetry, either because they survive only in fragments or because the earliest evidence for them dates to the classical period.

Author: Christopher Athanasious Faraone
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 10/29/2021
Pages: 280
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 6.50h x 9.70w x 1.20d
ISBN13: 9780197552971
ISBN10: 0197552978
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | Ancient & Classical
- Literary Criticism | Poetry
- History | Ancient | General

About the Author

Christopher Athanasious Faraone is the Edward Olson Professor of Classics at University of Chicago. His publications include Ancient Greek Love Magic, The Stanzaic Architecture of Archaic Greek Elegy, and The Getty Hexameters: Poetry, Magic and Mystery in Ancient Greek Selinous