Download PDF | Emma Greensmith - The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic_ Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica and the Poetics of Impersonation-Cambridge University Press (2020).
402 Pages
THE RESURRECTION OF HOMER IN IMPERIAL GREEK EPIC
This book offers a radically new reading of Quintus’ Posthomerica, the first account to combine a literary and cultural-historical understanding of what is the most important Greek epic written at the height of the Roman Empire. In Emma Greensmith’s ground-breaking analysis, Quintus emerges as a key poet in the history of epic and of Homeric reception. Writing as if he is Homer himself, and occupying the space between the Iliad and the Odyssey, Quintus constructs a new ‘poetics of the interval’. At all levels, from its philology to its plotting, the Posthomerica manipulates the language of affiliation, succession and repetition not just to articulate its own position within the inherited epic tradition but also to contribute to the literary and identity politics of imperial society. This book changes how we understand the role of epic and Homer in Greco-Roman culture – and completely reevaluates Quintus’ status as a poet.
Emma Greensmith is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at St John’s College, Oxford. She specialises in imperial Greek literature. She previously held a Research Fellowship at Jesus College, Cambridge, and a Visiting Assistant Professorship at Colgate University, New York. She was a member of the collaborative project ‘Imperial Greek Epic: A Cultural History’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Acknowledgements
This book began life as a PhD thesis, written as part of the Imperial Greek Epic project at the University of Cambridge. I am indebted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for funding the project, to Peterhouse for providing a supportive graduate (and undergraduate!) home and to the team of researchers who brought later Greek epic to life. Pavlos Avlamis, Emily Kneebone, Laura Miguélez-Cavero and Leyla Ozbek offered insights, intellectual encouragement and copious amounts of fun along the way. I can think of no better environment in which to have begun this research.
To Tim Whitmarsh, the project’s Principal Investigator and my doctoral supervisor, I owe more thanks than any acknowledgement could express. He has been unfailingly generous with his time and enthusiasm, his instincts about my research are always uncannily right and he has become in all respects an inspirational mentor and, I hope, a lifelong friend. Richard Hunter and Thomas Schmitz, the examiners of the thesis, provided numerous helpful suggestions on points large and small. I thank them for a stimulating and (actually) hugely enjoyable viva, which I shall always remember fondly. Since then, the book and I have travelled to a number of classics departments, near and far: Colgate University in New York, Jesus College, Cambridge, and finally St John’s College, Oxford, which I now proudly call my academic home.
I am immensely grateful to my colleagues and friends at all three places – especially to Robert Garland, Talitha Kearey, Franco Basso, Rosanna Omitiwoju and, now at Oxford, Georgy Kantor, the late, inimitable Donald Russell, Constanze Gu¨ thenke and ‘the team’ (Karolina, Pan, Pippa and Dan) – for their intellectual community and great friendship. It is often said that academia can be an isolating place. I have never found that to be true.
I have benefited from the input of all those who have read chapters and listened to papers during the course of the book’s preparation. Michael Sharp, Michael Squire and Jás Elsner provided fantastic editorial advice and fresh ideas, as did the manuscript’s two external readers. Thanks also to Mary Morton for her meticulous copyediting. For their attention to, (re) readings of and comments on the project at so many stages, two people deserve particular thanks. Calum Maciver – whose book on the Posthomerica was the first thing I ever read on Quintus – has been an invaluable interlocutor from my PhD days to the present.
It is a privilege to share ideas about Quintan poetics with him. Simon Goldhill, whose infectious enthusiasm for imperial Greek epic first burst into our reading group on Nonnus, has since become a cherished friend and intellectual ally, and his razor-sharp comments on the book’s macro- and micro- ideas have enriched the finished version tremendously. I am so lucky to know Daisy Dixon and Hannah Woods (my best friends): they share in the mēnis, and, in the true spirit of nostos, always make me feel that I am home. My final and deepest thanks go to my family, and above all to Anthony, for everything.
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