Greek Epigram in Reception: J. A. Symonds, Oscar Wilde, and the Invention of Desire, 1805-1929 (Classical Presences)

Greek Epigram in Reception: J. A. Symonds, Oscar Wilde, and the Invention of Desire, 1805-1929 (Classical Presences)
by: Gideon Nisbet (Author)
Publisher: Oxford University Press(UK)
Publication Date: 31 Oct. 2013
Language: English
Print Length: 398 pages
ISBN-10: 9780199662494
ISBN-13: 9780199662494
Book Description
Greek Epigram in Reception is a chronological survey of the reception history of the Greek Anthology, a Byzantine collection of ancient Greek short poems known as epigrams. Tracing the strange evolution of the Greek Anthology from the early nineteenth century to the years after the first World War, the volume analyses the complex webs of rhetoric that are spun as writers and translators bring their different agendas to bear on the Anthology’s text, pruning it to meet their needs. As so little was known about its poets, and because it stood for the “Anthology” of the Greeks and their culture, the text became the battleground during the 1870s-90s on which normative and dissident interpretations of Ancient Greece were fought out. An emergent mass readership became caught between opposing and rhetorically loaded accounts, casting the Anthology and thus the ancient race on whom the British were supposed to be modelling themselves as patriots and doting spouses or lovers of male Beauty, like the Decadent sensation Oscar Wilde. The after-effects of this cultural war were to stretch into the 1920s, and still echo today.

About the Author

Review Nisbet’s book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the discipline of classics and its Victorian flourishing. ― Simon Goldhill, Bryn Mawr Classical Review Book Description Tracing the evolution and reception history of a collection of ancient Greek epigrams from the early nineteenth to twentieth century, the volume analyzes the rhetoric which writers and translators brought to the text. About the Author Gideon Nisbet is a Reader in Classics at the University of Birmingham. He is known for his publications in ancient epigram and the reception of classical Greece and Rome in modern culture. Read more