Hidden Presences: Monuments, Gravesites, and Corpses in Greek Funerary EpigramHidden Presences explores the inheritances of Hellenistic literary epigram from the sepulchral sub-genre of inscribed epigram. Divorced from the stone and the burial site, the literary form enjoys a new freedom, but exhibits this independence in a deliberate but creative use of out-of-date themes (notably roadside placement of the monument), subversive use of the inscribed epigrams' attempt to betray the "hidden presence" of the deceased, and exploitation of sepulchral conceits surrounding cenotaph. Indeed, this study shows not only that the fourth- and third-century poets at the headwaters of the literary tradition were interested in inscriptional precedents, but also that this interest was exercised down to the time of the epigrammatist Meleager. The poets within the variative community of literary epigram therefore carry on a literary conversation not simply between themselves, but between themselves and the inscribed tradition, and among themselves about the inscribed tradition. |
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Common terms and phrases
afjua Alcaeus Antipater of Sidon archaic period Asclepiades Attica burial buried Callaeschrus Callimachus cenotaph century B.C. circa concealment couplet Damagetus dead death at sea deceased Dioscorides Diphilus distich earth elegiac epigrammatic epigrammatists epitaph Euippus fate fictive fourth century Friedlander and Hoffleit funerary epigram grams grave epigram Greek Gutzwiller 1998 GV-I GV-l Hades Hansen Hegesippus Hellenistic epigrams Hellenistic literary Hellenistic period Heraclitus hexameter hidden presence Homeric Humphreys 1993 Iliad inscribed epigrams KXeoq lament Lattimore 1942 Leonidas 62 G-P Leonidas of Tarentum Leontichus literary epigram living Lycus marker Meleager Meleagrian memory ment metonymic monument motif Nicetas obscuring surface Odyssey passerby Peek Perses poem poem's poets Posidippus present Promachus reader realm revealed rhetoric roadside placement sepulchral epigram shipwreck Sourvinou-Inwood 1995 stele stone Teleutagoras term Tharsys theme Theocritus Theodoridas Theris third century Timolytus tion tomb tradition tumulus uvfjua voice washed ashore word
Bibliographic information
| Title | Hidden Presences: Monuments, Gravesites, and Corpses in Greek Funerary Epigram Volume 10 of Hellenistica Groningana Volume 10 of Hellenistica Groningana: Proceedings of the Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry |
| Author | Jon Steffen Bruss |
| Publisher | Egbert Forsten, 2005 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Apr 28, 2008 |
| ISBN | 9042916419, 9789042916418 |
| Length | 201 pages |
| Subjects | › Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical Social Science / Folklore & Mythology |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |