The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod

By: Alexander Loney (Editor), Stephen Scully (Editor)

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Hardcover | 6 September 2018

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Hardcover
552 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
18.0 x 24.9 x 3.6

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This volume brings together 29 junior and senior scholars to discuss aspects of Hesiod's poetry and its milieu and to explore questions of reception over two and half millennia from shortly after the poems' conception to Twitter hashtags. Rather than an exhaustive study of Hesiodic themes, the Handbook is conceived as a guide through terrain, some familiar, other less charted, examining both Hesiodic craft and later engagements with Hesiod's stories of the gods and moralizing proscriptions of just human behavior.

The volume opens with the "Hesiodic Question," to address questions of authorship, historicity, and the nature of composition of Hesiod's two major poems, the Theogony and Works and Days. Subsequent chapters on the archaeology and economic history of archaic Boiotia, Indo-European poetics, and Hesiodic style offer a critical picture of the sorts of questions that have been asked rather than an attempt to resolve debate. Other chapters discuss Hesiod's particular rendering of the supernatural and the performative nature of the Works and Days, as well as competing diachronic and synchronic temporalities and varying portrayals of female in the two poems.

The rich story of reception ranges from Solon to comic books. These chapters continue to explore the nature of Hesiod's poetics, as different writers through time single out new aspects of his art less evident to earlier readers. Long before the advent of Christianity, classical writers leveled their criticism at Hesiod's version of polytheism. The relative importance of Hesiod's two major poems across time also tells us a tale of the age receiving the poems. In the past two centuries, artists and writers have come to embrace the Hesiodic stories for themselves for the insight they offer of the human condition but even as old allegory looks quaint to modern eyes new forms of allegory take form.

Industry Reviews

"The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod is a fantastic volume, with chapters all written by accomplished international scholars; a volume that bespeaks the wide range of Hesiodic scholarship and reception from antiquity to today. Consequently, it is an indispensable work of reference relevant to anyone who is interested in Hesiod. Besides, it should also be part of every Homerist's library." -- Silvio Bär, University of Oslo , Classical Journal-Online "This is a landmark publication, unprecedented in scope and ambition: the editors and contributors are to be congratulated for achieving such comprehensive coverage of the Theogony and Works and Days throughout the ages and across a wide range of genres." -- Gary Vos, Classics for All "...an exemplarary achievement, comprehensive and diverse, erudite enough to satisfy scholars yet readable enough to be accessibleo ambitious nonspecialists--a companion that will find use mong not only classicists but also those whose interests include comparative literature and poetry." -- F.A. Grabowski, CHOICE "As one might expect from Oxford, the contributors are some of the finest scholars in the field. Apart from the essays themselves, the text includes a fine introduction by the editors, a standard index of names and subjects, and a robust 'Index Locorum Anitiquorum.' The result is an exemplary achievement, comprehensive and diverse, erudite enough to satisfy scholars yet readable enough to be accessible to ambitious nonspecialists-a companion that will find use among not only classicists but also those whose interests include comparative literature and poetry. Essential." -- CHOICE

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