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Tombs of the Ancient Poets explores the ways in which the tombs of the ancient poets - real or imagined - act as crucial sites for the reception of Greek and Latin poetry. Drawing together a range of examples, it makes a distinctive contribution to the study of literary reception by focusing on the materiality of the body and the tomb, and the ways in which they mediate the relationship between classical poetry and its readers. From the tomb of the boy poet Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, which preserves his prize-winning poetry carved on the tombstone itself, to the modern votive offerings left at the so-called 'Tomb of Virgil'; from the doomed tomb-hunting of long-lost poets' graves, to the 'graveyard of the imagination' constructed in Hellenistic poetry collections, the essays collected here explore the position of ancient poets' tombs in the cultural imagination and demonstrate the rich variety of ways in which they exemplify an essential mode of the reception of ancient poetry, poised as they are between literary reception and material culture.
List of contents
- Frontmatter
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- 0: Nora Goldschmidt and Barbara Graziosi: Introduction
- Part I: Material Texts, Textual Materials
- 1: Verity Platt: Silent Bones and Singing Stones: Materializing the Poetic Corpus in Hellenistic Greece
- 2: Richard Rawles: Simonides on Tombs, and the 'Tomb of Simonides'
- 3: Francesca Martelli: Ennius' imago between Tomb and Text
- 4: Valentina Garulli: A Portrait of the Poet as a Young Man: The Tomb of Quintus Sulpicius Maximus on the Via Salaria
- 5: Nora Goldschmidt: Ovid's Tombs: Afterlives of a Poetic corpus
- Part II: The Poet as Character
- 6: Emmanuela Bakola: Earth, Nature, and the Cult of the Tomb: The Posthumous Reception of Aeschylus' heros
- 7: Peter Bing: Tombs of the Poets' Minor Characters
- 8: Barbara Graziosi: Still Singing: The Case of Orpheus
- Part III: Collecting Tombs
- 9: Regina Höschele: Poets' Corners in Greek Epigram Collections
- 10: Silvia Montiglio: Impermanent Stones, Permanent Plants: Tombs of Poets as Material Objects in the Palatine Anthology
- 11: Johanna Hanink: Pausanias' Dead Poets Society
- Part IV: The Tomb of Virgil
- 12: Andrew Laird: Dead Letters and Buried Meaning: Approaching the Tomb of Virgil
- 13: Irene Peirano Garrison: The Tomb of Virgil between Text, Memory, and Site
- 14: Harald Hendrix: Virgil's Tomb in Scholarly and Popular Culture
- 15: Sam Smiles: Ruins and Reputations: The Tomb of the Poet in Visual Art
- Endmatter
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Nora Goldschmidt is Associate Professor of Classics at Durham University. She is the author of Shaggy Crowns: Ennius' Annales and Virgil's Aeneid (Oxford University Press, 2013) and is currently completing a monograph on fictional biography and the reception of Latin poetry, Afterlives of the Roman Poets: Biofiction and the Reception of Latin Poetry (under contract with Cambridge University Press).
Barbara Graziosi is Professor of Classics and Head of Department at Durham University. Her most recent monographs are The Gods of Olympus: A History (Profile Books, 2014) and Homer (Oxford University Press, 2016). She recently completed a major research project, funded by the European Research Council, on visual and narrative portraits of the ancient Greek and Roman poets, entitled Living Poets: A New Approach to Ancient Poetry. This volume stems from that project.
Summary
Tombs of the Ancient Poets explores the ways in which the tombs of the ancient poets - real or imagined - act as crucial sites for the reception of Greek and Latin poetry. Drawing together a range of examples, it makes a distinctive contribution to the study of literary reception by focusing on the materiality of the body and the tomb, and the ways in which they mediate the relationship between classical poetry and its readers. From the tomb of the boy poet Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, which preserves his prize-winning poetry carved on the tombstone itself, to the modern votive offerings left at the so-called 'Tomb of Virgil'; from the doomed tomb-hunting of long-lost poets' graves, to the 'graveyard of the imagination' constructed in Hellenistic poetry collections, the essays collected here explore the position of ancient poets' tombs in the cultural imagination and demonstrate the rich variety of ways in which they exemplify an essential mode of the reception of ancient poetry, poised as they are between literary reception and material culture.
Report
Tombs of the Ancient Poets is a balanced and exceptionally accomplished publication, which will serve not only researchers dealing with antiquity but also those interested in the broader topics of "cultural saints" and the literary tradition and its spatiality. Tomasz Mojsik, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
