Arion's Lyre: Archaic Lyric Into Hellenistic Poetry (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780691095257)

Arion's Lyre examines how Hellenistic poetic culture adapted, reinterpreted, and transformed Archaic Greek lyric through a complex process of textual, cultural, and creative reception. Looking at the ways in which the poetry of Sappho, Alcaeus, Ibycus, Anacreon, and Simonides was preserved, edited, and read by Hellenistic scholars and poets, the book shows that Archaic poets often look very different in the new social, cultural, and political setting of Hellenistic Alexandria. For example, the Alexandrian Sappho evolves from the singer of Archaic Lesbos but has distinct associations and contexts, from Ptolemaic politics and Macedonian queens to the new phenomenon of the poetry book and an Alexandrian scholarship intent on preservation and codification.

A study of Hellenistic poetic culture and an interpretation of some of the Archaic poets it so lovingly preserved, Arion's Lyre is also an examination of how one poetic culture reads another--and how modern readings of ancient poetry are filtered and shaped by earlier readings.

Author: Benjamin Acosta-Hughes
ISBN-10: 0691095256
ISBN-13: 9780691095257
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/24/2010
Pages: 248
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 01/22/2010 pg. 17