Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture: Volume 2, Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and Imperial Greek Poetry, the Novels

In this book one of the world's leading Hellenists brings together his many contributions over four decades to our understanding of major genres of Greek literature, above all the Greek novel, but also Attic Comedy, fifth-century historiography, and Hellenistic and Imperial Greek poetry. Many are already essential reading, such as the chapter on the figure of Lycidas in Theocritus' Idyll 7, or two chapters on the ancient readership of Greek novels. Discussions of Imperial Greek poetry published three decades ago opened up a world almost entirely neglected by scholars. Several chapters address literary and linguistic issues in Longus' novel Daphnis and Chloe, complementing the author's commentary published in 2019; two contribute to a better understanding of the enigmatic Aethiopica of Heliodorus; and many explore important questions arising from examination of the form of the Greek novel as a whole. This is the second of a planned three-volume collection.

About the Author

EWEN BOWIE is the Emeritus E. P. Warren Praelector and Fellow in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and Emeritus Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford. He writes on early Greek poetry; Comedy; Hellenistic poetry; and the Greek literature and culture of the Roman Empire. He co-edited volumes on Philostratus (Cambridge, 2009) and Archaic and Classical Choral Song (2011), edited one on Herodotus (2018), and published a commentary on Longus' Daphnis and Chloe (Cambridge, 2019).