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Pindar's Library is the first volume to explore how readers during the Hellenistic period encountered Pindar's poetry in book form, analysing in detail the role played by Pindar's literary, cultic, and scholarly reception in affecting readers' engagement with his epinician odes. The volume examines the poet's literary devices of encomiastic techniques, mythical narratives, and paraenetic discourses against the background of the song culture of the fifth century, considering the poems as both material documents and performance pieces. With a particular focus on the poems that begin and end the Olympian and Pythian books, the volume considers the continuities between reading and attending performances, highlighting elements of readers' experiences distinctive to Hellenistic culture. It also investigates the issue of quotations of poets in ancient commentaries, and how such citations influenced readers' understanding of intertextual relationships. Throughout the volume, the relations between Pindar's epinicians and the contextual factors that influence their reception are seen in dialogic terms: as well as exerting a powerful influence over subsequent literature, the poems are also recontextualized in ways that shift and extend their cultural significance.
This volume investigates how the transition of Pindar's epinician odes from oral performance to written text in the Hellenistic period fundamentally altered the reception and interpretation of his work. Tom Phillips, a scholar of classical literature, utilizes a combination of material evidence, ancient commentaries, and literary analysis to argue that the physical book form introduced new layers of meaning to the poems. By examining the interplay between the original fifth-century song culture and later scholarly engagement, the author demonstrates how the text was recontextualized to suit the intellectual needs of Hellenistic readers.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Experts in classical philology recognize this work as a significant contribution to the study of ancient book culture and the reception of lyric poetry. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which is intended for specialists in Hellenistic studies and classical reception.
Page Count:
352
Publication Date:
2015-01-01
Publisher:
OUP Oxford
ISBN-10:
0191062901
ISBN-13:
9780191062902
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