The Center for Hellenic Studies

poetry
Hellenic Studies Series

Criteria of Truth: Representations of Truth and Falsehood in Hellenistic Poetry

Amidst conflicting information and personal experiences, how can someone distinguish between truth and falsehood? Criteria of Truth: Representations of Truth and Falsehood in Hellenistic Poetry tackles this fundamental question through a study of five Hellenistic poems dated to the third and second centuries BCE: Aratus’s Phaenomena, Nicander’s Theriaca, Callimachus’s Aetia, Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica, and Lycophron’s Alexandra. Situating these poetic works in their intellectual and literary milieu, Kathleen Kidder applies the philosophic concept of the criterion of truth, arguing that each… Read more

Curated Books

Phraseologie und indogermanische Dichtersprache in der Sprache der griechischen Chorlyrik: Pindar und Bakchylides

The subject of this work is the phraseology and poetic language that are documented in Pindar (518-446 BC) and Bakchylides (516-452 BC), have parallels in other poetic traditions, and can in part prove to be inherited. Phraseology is the way in which phraseological units (individual words or groups of words) are combined in the oral or written language. In any study of phraseology, the first thing to consider is how… Read more

Curated Books

The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry

Despite widespread interest in the Greek hero as a cult figure, little was written about the relationship between the cult practices and the portrayals of the hero in poetry. The first edition of The Best of the Achaeans bridged that gap, raising new questions about what could be known or conjectured about Greek heroes. In this revised edition, which features a new preface by the author, Gregory Nagy reconsiders his conclusions in… Read more

Curated Articles

Theognis and Megara: A Poet’s Vision of his City

[[This article was originally published in 1985 by The Johns Hopkins University Press as Chapter 2 of Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis (ed. by T. Figueria and G. Nagy) 22-81. Baltimore. In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{22|23}” indicates where p. 22 of the printed version ends and p. 23 begins]] [1]… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

Equine Poetics

Equine Poetics is a literary analysis of horses and horsemanship in early Greek epic and lyric poetry, especially those facets that reflect the prehistory of Greek language and culture. The book begins with Ryan Platte’s analysis of Homeric formulas for horses, proposing a model by which most such formulas may be understood as members of a single verbal network, with roots in preliterate antiquity. He then considers the poetic relationship between horses… Read more

CHS News | Michael Marks award-winning poets reading their own work

2016 Poets in Residence Program Poets Gill Mc Evoy and Jennifer Elliott, this year’s winners of the “Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets” in London and Edinburgh (a.k.a. the Callum MacDonald Award), participated in the Michael Marks Poets in Residence Program for two weeks during the past summer. The CHS had prepared a program full of activities in Nafplio, Ancient Olympia, Delphi, and Athens. Once in Ancient Olympia, our two… Read more

News

CHS News | Michael Marks award-winning poets reading their own work

2016 Poets in Residence Program Poets Gill Mc Evoy and Jennifer Elliott, this year’s winners of the “Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets” in London and Edinburgh (a.k.a. the Callum MacDonald Award), participated in the Michael Marks Poets in Residence Program for two weeks during the past summer. The CHS had prepared a program full of activities in Nafplio, Ancient Olympia, Delphi, and Athens. Once in Ancient Olympia, our two brilliant… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

Poetic and Performative Memory in Ancient Greece: Heroic Reference and Ritual Gestures in Time and Space

Translated by Harlan Patton. Philosophers have often reflected on the Ancient Greeks’ concepts of time, but an anthropological approach is necessary to understand their practical concept of time as tied to space. The Greeks not only spoke of time unfolding in a specific space, but also projected the past upon the future in order to make it active in the social practice of the present. Hesiod’s history of humanity was… Read more