Time Tense and Genre in Ancient Greek Literature (Hardcover)

The 24 essays collected in this book address the complex interactions between concepts of time grammatical tense and type of genre of prose or poetry in ancient Greek literature. The chronological scope stretches across nearly a millennium from archaic epic to the Second Sophistic from the emotional intensity of Homer to Plutarch and the playfulness of Lucian tracing patterns developments contrasts and intertextual allusiveness across diverse texts and authors. These include dramatists (Aeschylus Euripides Sophocles and Aristophanes) philosophers (Plato) lyricists (Alcman and Sappho) ancient literary critics (Dionysius of Halicarnassus) orators (whose lawcourt speeches were delivered literally against the clock in the form of the clepsydra) Hellenistic poets (Apollonius and Lycophron) historiographers (Herodotus) and the fabulist Aesop. The structure is informed by Greek philosophical categories exploring discrete metaphysical psychological aetiological and ethical ideas about temporality; the collective project of the volume is to investigate how authors manipulated not only tenses but imagery moods and metres as well as generic conventions in shaping and articulating notions about orality literariness subjectivity immediacy presence futurity causation gender sexuality ethnography cosmology and remotest prehistory. The result is a pioneering unique and multifaceted volume that throws light not only on the rich linguistic resources of the ancient Greek language in evoking time but on surprising interconnections between genres often studied in isolation.