The epics of ancient Greece and Rome are unique in that many went unfinished, or if they were finished, remained open to further narration that was beyond the power, interest, or sometimes the life-span of the poet. Such incompleteness inaugurated a tradition of continuance and closure in their reception.Brill's Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epicexplores this long tradition of continuing epics through sequels, prequels, retellings and spin-offs. This collection of essays brings together several noted scholars working in a variety of fields to trace the persistence of this literary effort from their earliest instantiations in theIliadandOdysseyof Homer to the contemporary novels of Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood.
Author(s): Robert Simms
Series: Brill's Companions to Classical Reception 15
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 400
Contents......Page 5
Notes on Contributors......Page 9
Introduction (Simms)......Page 13
Part 1. Trojan and Homeric Continuations......Page 19
The Odyssey after the Iliad: Ties That Bind (Minchin)......Page 21
The Ilias Latina as a Roman Continuation of the Iliad (Glei)......Page 43
Triphiodorus’ The Sack of Troy and Colluthus’ The Rape of Helen: A Sequel and a Prequel from Late Antiquity (Karavas)......Page 64
Program and Poetics in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica (Maciver)......Page 83
Teaching Homer through (Annotated) Poetry: John Tzetzes’ Carmina Iliaca (Cardin)......Page 102
Joseph of Exeter: Troy through Dictys and Dares (Mora-Lebrun)......Page 127
Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid: Transtextual Tragedy (Haydock)......Page 146
Trojan Pasts, Medieval Presents: Epic Continuation in Eleventh to Thirteenth Century Genealogical Histories (Goldwyn)......Page 166
Epic Continuation as Basis for Moral Education: The Télémaque of Fénelon (Lohne)......Page 187
Nikos Kazantzakis’ Odysseia: The Epic Sequel in Modern Greek Poetry and Classical Reception (Klironomos)......Page 201
Spinning a Thread of One’s Own from Homer to Atwood (Akgün)......Page 218
Part 2. Beyond Troy and Homer......Page 237
Squaring the Epic Cycle: Ovid’s Rewriting of the Epic Tradition in the Metamorphoses (von Glinski)......Page 239
Continuing the Aeneid in the First Century: Ovid’s “Little Aeneid”, Lucan’s Bellum Civile, and Silius Italicus’ Punica (Bernstein)......Page 260
Vegio’s Supplement: Classical Learning, Christian Readings (Rogerson)......Page 279
Ending the Argonautica: Giovanni Battista Pio’s Argonautica-Supplement (1519) (Buckley)......Page 307
Redressing Caesar as Dido in Thomas May’s Continuations of Lucan (Simms)......Page 328
Thomas Ross’ Translation and Continuation of Silius Italicus’ Punica in the English Restoration (Augoustakis)......Page 347
Epic Scotland: Wilkie, Macpherson and Other Homeric Efforts (Lindfield-Ott)......Page 369
Virgil Mentor: Ursula Le Guin’s Lavinia (Haydock)......Page 387
Index......Page 405
