Product Description

The first comprehensive treatment of Latin figures of repetition, this poetic handbook includes over ten thousand quotations from Ennius to Juvenal, with numerous examples from Latin prose and Greek literature for comparison. Long relegated to commentary notes, the figures of gemination, epanalepsis, polyptotn, anaphora etc. are finally treated systematically as distinct stylistic markers. Under each topic, Professor Wills studies extensively the authorial preferences and traditions of the various genres, with figures arising from the positional and framing structures of repetitions collected at the end. A section on formal means of allusion and the special attention given throughout the book to the use of figures for intertextual reference also makes the work a major contribution to the Latin poetics of allusion. Literary critics, textual critics, and commentators should all find this volume indispensable in different ways.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1966959 in Books
• Published on: 1996-12-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 528 pages

Customer Reviews

Very important
Literary theory came to Classics quite late, but when it eventually did, with the advocacy of Latinists for the most part, it transformed our understanding of ancient poetics and ancient culture in general. There are still people with serious misgivings concerning the use of such modern conceptual tools as the study of intertextuality (some of these misgivings are legitimate: the danger of anachronism, the possibility of exaggeration due to oversensitive, TLG-driven searches, etc.), but generally speaking arguing against the application of modern literary and cultural theory in the field of Classics would be like campaigning to ban the use of microscopes in Physics.
Repetition in Latin Poetry is one of the latest instances in which literary theory is put to excellent hermeneutic use. The argument is well supported, brilliantly researched and almost always illuminating. Most Latin quotations are translated, except where translation would just spoil the argument. The author's style has a rare lucidity for texts of this kind. Definitely recommended to anybody interested in poetry and poetics, despite the high price.