Aglaia

In this landmark collection of essays, renowned classicist Charles Segal offers detailed analyses of major texts from archaic and early classical Greek poetry - in particular, works of Alcman, Mimnermus, Sappho, Pindar, Bacchylides, and Corinna. Segal provides close readings of the texts, and then studies the literary form and language of early Greek lyric, the poets' conception of their aims and their art, the use of mythical paradigms, and the relation of the poems to their social context. A recurrent theme is the recognition of the fragility and brevity of mortal happiness and the consciousness of how the immortality conferred by poetry resists the ever-threatening presence of death and oblivion, fixing in permanent form the passing moments of joy and beauty. This is an essential book for students and scholars of ancient Greek poetry.

ISBN 0847686175   Pages 352 ISBN13 9780847686179 (What's this?)   Volumes 001 Publisher Rowman & Littlefield   Weight (grammes) 475 Imprint Rowman & Littlefield   Published in Lanham, MD Format Paperback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 28 Dec 1998   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress PA3092.S44   Spine width (mm) 20 DEWEY 881.0109   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC21

		Editor's Foreword
		Preface
		Abbreviations and Selected Short Titles
		Introduction		1
1		Poetry, Performance, and Society in Early Greek Literature		9
2		Sirius and the Pleiades in Alcman's Louvre Partheneion		25
3		Eros and Incantation: Sappho and Oral Poetry		43
4		Beauty, Desire, and Absence: Helen in Sappho, Alcaeus, and Ibycus		63
5		The Gorgon and the Nightingale: The Voice of Female Lament and Pindar's Twelfth Pythian Ode		85
6		Naming, Truth, and Creation in the Poetics of Pindar		105
7		Messages to the Underworld: An Aspect of Poetic Immortalization in Pindar		133
8		Pindar, Mimnermus, and the "Zeus-given Gleam": The End of Pythian 8		149
9		Time and the Hero: The Myth of Nemean 1		155
10		Arrest and Movement: Pindar's Fifth Nemean		167
11		Pindar's Seventh Nemean		185
12		Myth, Cult, and Memory in Pindar's Third and Fourth Isthmian Odes		229
13		Bacchylides Reconsidered: Epithets and the Dynamics of Lyric Narrative		251
14		Croesus on the Pyre: Herodotus and Bacchylides		281
15		The Myth of Bacchylides 17: Heroic Quest and Heroic Identity		295
16		Pebbles in Golden Urns: The Date and Style of Corinna		315
		Index Locorum		327
		General Index		331
		About the Author		339

These four chapters, together with Chaper 6, offer a compelling vision of the structure of the Pindaric ode, firmly rooted in American New Criticism, as well as excellent readings of the individual odes. These essays will continue to be of use for scholars with like or different concerns, both as a record of an influential strand of Pindaric scholarship ( in particular) and as fine examples of the close reading of highly wrought works. As with all books in this Rowman and Littlefield series, the collection is very reasonably priced, and this will ensure the continued dissemination of these essays...--Nigel Nicholson "Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Vol. 9, No. 8, 1998 "

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