A01=Gregson Davis
ancient poetry
ancient roman history
ancient roman literature
ancient roman poetry
arguments
assimilation
augustan poetry
authentication
Author_Gregson Davis
Category=DCF
Category=DSBB
Category=DSC
Category=DSK
classical poetry
consolation
dance
eloquence
enlightening
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
horace
horatian lyrics
literary
literary criticism
lyric self
muse
odes
philology
poems
poetic discourse
poetry
polyhymnia
polymnia
praise and dispraise
quintus horatius flaccus
rome
sacred hymn
sacred poetry
the muses
Product details
- ISBN 9780520070776
- Weight: 590g
- Publication Date: 18 Oct 1991
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Horace's Odes have a surface translucency that belies their rhetorical sophistication. Gregson Davis brings together recent trends in the study of Augustan poetry and critical theory and deftly applies them to individual poems. Exploring four rhetorical strategies--what he calls modes of assimilation, authentication, consolation, and praise and dispraise--Davis produces enlightening, new interpretations of this classic work. Polyhymnia, named after one of the Muses invoked in Horace's opening poem, revises the common image of Horace as a complacent, uncomplicated, and basically superficial singer. Focusing on the artistic persona--the lyric "self" that is constituted in the text--Davis explores how the lyric speaker constructs subtle "arguments" whose building-blocks are topoi, recurrent motifs, and generic conventions. By examining the substructure of lyric argument in groupings of poems sharing similar strategies, the author discloses the major principles that inform Horatian lyric composition.
Gregson Davis is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Cornell University.
