The Scroll and the Marble

by Bing, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780472116324
• ISBN10: 0472116320
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-05
• Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr

Summary

"Peter Bing has long served as a model for acute criticism and careful reading. He has a marvelous ability to make readers re-think their preconceptions." ---Ben Acosta-Hughes, Associate Professor of Greek and Latin, University of MichiganWhile people of previous ages relied on public performance as their chief means of experiencing poetry, the Hellenistic age developed what one may term a culture of reading. This was the first era in which poets consciously shaped their works with an eye toward publication and reception not just on the civic stage, but in several media---in performance, on inscribed monuments, in scrolls. The essays in Peter Bing's collection explore how poetry accommodated various audiences, and how these in turn experienced the text in diverse ways. Over the years, Bing's essays have focused on certain Hellenistic authors and genres---particularly on Callimachus, Posidippus, and on Epigram. His themes, too, have been broadly consistent. Thus, although the essays in The Marble and the Scroll span some twenty years, they offer a coherent vision of Hellenistic poetics as a whole.Peter Bing is Associate Professor of Classics at Emory University, and author, most recently, ofBrill's Companion to Hellenistic Epigram down to Philip.