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Erotic Greek Epigram: A Diachronic Approach
Author(s): Maria Kanellou (Author)
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication Date: April 30, 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 336 pages
- ISBN-10: 0198816146
- ISBN-13: 9780198816140
Book Description
Four motifs drive diachronic research encompassing a wide chronological span from the Hellenistic up until the early Byzantine era: the lamp, sea, and nautical imagery, the beloved’s comparison to Aphrodite, and Eros and the Erotes. By analysing how these motifs were shaped and adapted over the centuries, the book illustrates the epigrammatists’ changing attitudes towards the material inherited from earlier poetic tradition, and leads to a deeper appreciation of the narrative techniques adopted by them as well as of the inner dynamics of poetic imitation and competition.
Moreover, the scrutiny of the motifs within wider literary and historical backgrounds reveals the influence exerted by different cultural and sociopolitical environments on the epigrammatists’ work in the course of centuries. The book offers a model for the type of diachronic research that can be applied to other epigrammatic subgenres and other motifs, and to Latin epigram.
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About the Author
Maria Kanellou studied at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and at UCL. She is currently Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Greek and Latin Literature of the Academy of Athens, and she has previously worked at UCL, KCL, the University of Kent, and OUC. She has co-organized three international conferences on Greek epigram and on Theocritus, and she has co-edited two collective volumes: one on Greek epigram published by OUP, and one on Palladas and the Yale Papyrus Codex (P. CtYBR inv. 4000) published by Brill. Another volume on Theocritus is forthcoming in the series Hellenistica Groningana.
