Quintus of Smyrna's 'Posthomerica' - by Silvio Bär & Emma Greensmith & Leyla Ozbek

About the Book

Offers a literary and cultural-historical analysis of the Posthomerica.

Book Synopsis

This collection offers a new collaborative reading of Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica: one of the most important Greek epics written at the height of the Roman Empire. Building on the surge of interest in imperial Greek poetry seen in the past decades, this book applies new approaches - literary, theoretical and historical - to ask new questions about this mysterious, challenging poet and to re-evaluate his role in the cultural history of his time.
Bringing together experienced imperial epic scholars and new voices in this growing field, the chapters reveal Quintus' crucial place within the inherited epic tradition and his role in shaping the literary and identity politics of Late Antique society.

From the Back Cover

Offers a literary and cultural-historical analysis of the Posthomerica This collection offers a new collaborative reading of Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica: a major, fascinating Greek epic written at the height of the Roman Empire. Building on the surge of interest in imperial Greek poetry seen in the past decades, this volume applies multiple approaches - literary, theoretical and historical - to ask new questions about this mysterious, challenging poet and to re-evaluate his role in the cultural history of his time. Bringing together experienced imperial epic scholars and new voices in this growing field, the chapters reveal Quintus' crucial place within the inherited epic tradition and his role in shaping the literary politics of Late Antique society. Silvio Bär is Professor of Classics at the University of Oslo. Emma Greensmith is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John's College. Leyla Ozbek is Research Fellow of Greek Language and Literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa.

Review Quotes

As this splendid collection demonstrates, our times are suited to an appreciation of Quintus of Smyrna's epic, What Came after Homer, which might be called The Iliad: A Modern Sequel (with a wink to Kazantzakis). This volume is unquestionably the best introduction to its originality and complex relation to the past.--David Konstan, Professor of Classics, New York University

About the Author

Silvio Bär is Professor of Classics at the University of Oslo. His research areas and interests include Greek hexameter poetry (especially of the imperial period), tragedy, lyric, the novel, mythology, rhetoric, the Second Sophistic, intertextuality, transtextuality, diachronic narratology, and the reception of antiquity in English literature and popular culture. He has published widely on Quintus of Smyrna's Posthomerica, on the genre 'epyllion', and on the character of Herakles in Greek epic and beyond.

Emma Greensmith is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John's College. She specialises in imperial Greek literature and is particularly interested in epic, poetics and religion. Her recent book, The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic: Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica and the Poetics of Impersonation (CUP, 2020) offers a new reading of the role of epic and the reception of Homer in Graeco-Roman culture. She has also written recent articles on Nonnus, Gregory of Nazianzus and the Sibylline Oracles and is editing a new Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic.

Leyla Ozbek is Research Fellow of Greek Language and Literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. She obtained her PhD in Classics at the Scuola Normale with a dissertation on Quintus' Posthomerica Book 9, now forthcoming for publication. She has been research fellow at the Scuola Normale and annual visiting scholar at the University College London and at the University of Zurich. In 2015-2016 she was Research Associate at the University of Cambridge on the AHRC-funded Project 'Greek Epic of the Roman Empire: A Cultural History'. Her research interests are Greek epic and culture of the imperial period, Greek tragedy and fragments, papyrology and the study of ancient manuscripts transmission.