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This book selects central texts illustrating the literary reception of Hesiod's Works and Days in antiquity and considers how these moments were crucial in fashioning the idea of 'didactic literature'. A central chapter considers the development of ancient ideas about didactic poetry, relying not so much on explicit critical theory as on how Hesiod was read and used from the earliest period of reception onwards. Other chapters consider Hesiodic reception in the archaic poetry of Alcaeus and Simonides, in the classical prose of Plato, Xenophon and Isocrates, in the Aesopic tradition, and in the imperial prose of Dio Chrysostom and Lucian; there is also a groundbreaking study of Plutarch's extensive commentary on the Works and Days and an account of ancient ideas of Hesiod's linguistic style. This is a major and innovative contribution to the study of Hesiod's remarkable poem and to the Greek literary engagement with the past.
List of contents
1. Reading Hesiod; 2. A didactic poem?; 3. Hesiod and the symposium; 4. Plutarch's Works and Days, and Proclus', and Hesiod's; 5. Aesop and Hesiod; 6. Hesiod's style: towards an ancient analysis.
About the author
Richard Hunter is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, where he has taught since 1978, and a Fellow of Trinity College. He has published extensively in the fields of Greek and Latin literature; his most recent books include The Shadow of Callimachus (Cambridge, 2006), Critical Moments in Classical Literature (Cambridge, 2009), Plutarch: How to Study Poetry (De audiendis poetis) (with Donald Russell, Cambridge, 2011) and Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature: The Silent Stream (Cambridge, 2012). Many of his essays have been collected in the two-volume On Coming After: Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception (2008).
Summary
This book selects central moments in the literary reception of the Works and Days in antiquity, studies these moments in sophisticated depth, and pays particular attention to Hesiod's importance as the founding father of 'didactic literature'. It will appeal to all those with a serious interest in ancient literature.
