Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry - Genre, Tradition and Individuality (Hardcover)

How is it possible for a poet writing in a tradition so venerable and so constrained by convention as Roman epic to find his own individual voice? How do poets working in related genres - particularly didactic - see their relationship to the main epic tradition? The eleven new essays in this volume, by leading scholars in the field of Roman poetry and its post-Classical receptions, consider some of the strategies which writers from Lucretius onwards have employed in negotiating their relationship with their literary forebears, and staking out a place for their own work within a tradition stretching back to Hesiod and Homer. Monica Gale is a lecturer in Classics at Trinity College, Dublin. She has published extensively on the poetry of the Late Republican and Augustan periods, with a particular focus on questions of genre and intertextuality.