Writing Literary History in the Greek and Roman World

By: Giacomo Fedeli and Henry Spelman

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Synopsis: Covering a wide variety of Greek and Latin texts that span from the Archaic period down to Late Antiquity, this volume represents the first concerted attempt to understand ancient literary history in its full complexity and on its own terms. Abandoning long-standing misconceptions derived from the misleading application of modern assumptions and standards, the volume rehabilitates an often neglected but fundamentally important subject: the Greeks' and Romans' representations of the origins and development of their own literary traditions. The fifteen contributors to this volume evince the pervasiveness and diversity of ancient literary history as well as the manifold connections between its manifestations in a variety of texts. Taken as a whole, this volume argues that studying ancient literary history should not only provide insight into the Greek and Roman world but also provoke us to think reflexively about how we go about writing the history of ancient literature today.