The poets of Alexandria

Resource Information

The work The poets of Alexandria represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Missouri University of Science & Technology Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The poets of Alexandria

Statement of responsibility

Susan A. Stephens

Creator

• Stephens, Susan A

Author

• Stephens, Susan A

Subject

• Greek poetry, Hellenistic -- History and criticism
• Poetics
• Apollonius, Rhodius
• Theocritus
• Posidippus, of Pella, approximately 310 B.C.-approximately 240 B.C
• Callimachus

Language

eng

Summary

Alexandria was the greatest of the new cities founded by Alexander the Great as his armies swept eastward. It was ruled by his successors, the Ptolemies, who presided over one of the richest and most productive periods in the whole of Greek literature. Susan A Stephens here reveals a cultural world in transition: reverential of the compositions of the past (especially after construction of the great library, repository for all previous Greek oeuvres), but at the same time forward-looking and experimental, willing to make use of previous forms of writing in exciting new ways. The author examines Alexandria's poets in turn. She discusses the strikingly avant-garde Aetia of Callimachus; the idealized pastoral forms of Theocritus (which anticipated the invention of fiction); and the neo-Homerian epic of Apollonius, the Argonautica, with its impressive combination of narrative grandeur and psychological acuity. She shows that all three poets were innovators, even while they looked to the past for inspiration: drawing upon Homer, Hesiod, Pindar and the lyric poets, they emphasized stories and material that were entirely relevant to their own progressive cosmopolitan environment

Cataloging source

YDX

Dewey number

881/.0109

Illustrations

maps

Index

index present

LC call number

PA3084.P7

LC item number

S74 2018

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography