Talking Books

Abstract

The study of Latin poetry-books, though seen as important, has suffered from limited engagement with Greek literature and papyri. This book, which combines unpublished and recently published pieces, shows the importance of considering Greek and Latin works together, and of using Greek and Latin papyri in the study of poetic books. Important here are both new texts and evidence on the making and reading of books. The study of book-structure should embrace books which consist of short poems and books which make up part of long poems. The combination of poems within books, of books within a group or series, and of works within an œuvre, are all related. Book-structure should be seen as an aspect of sequential reading; changes and meanings, it emerges, are more significant than abstract symmetries. The book frames a series of discussions of major poems and collections from the 3rd and 1st centuries BC with an illustrated survey of poetry-books and reading and a more general discussion of structures involving books. The main poets discussed are Callimachus, Apollonius, Posidippus, Catullus, Horace, Ovid; there is a chapter on Latin didactic (Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Manilius). The discussions deal with fundamental issues in the works, and, in accordance with the approach advocated, bring in many critical and scholarly questions beside book-structure.

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