Scale, Space and Canon in Ancient Literary Culture
Reviel Netz
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
Greek culture matters because its unique pluralistic debate shaped modern discourses. This ground-breaking book explains this feature by retelling the history of ancient literary culture through the lenses of canon, space and scale. It proceeds from the invention of the performative 'author' in the archaic symposium through the 'polis of letters' enabled by Athenian democracy and into the Hellenistic era, where one's space mattered and culture became bifurcated between Athens and Alexandria. This duality was reconfigured into an eclectic variety consumed by Roman patrons and predicated on scale, with about a thousand authors active at any given moment. As patronage dried up in the third century CE, scale collapsed and literary culture was reduced to the teaching of a narrower field of authors, paving the way for the Middle Ages. The result is a new history of ancient culture which is sociological, quantitative, and all-encompassing, cutting through eras and genres.
Product Details
Price
$76.99
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publish Date
April 02, 2020
Pages
902
Dimensions
6.0 X 8.6 X 1.7 inches | 3.4 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781108481472
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Become an affiliateAbout the Author
REVIEL NETZ is Patrick Suppes Professor of Greek Mathematics and Astronomy in the Department of Classics at Stanford University. He is the author of many celebrated books, including (with William Noel) the bestselling The Archimedes Codex: Revealing the Secret of the World's Greatest Palimpsest (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 2007, winner of the Neumann Prize), and the path-breaking The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics (1999, winner of the Runciman Award), Scale, Space and Canon in Ancient Literary Culture (2020, winner of the 2021 Classical Studies category PROSE Award), and A New History of Greek Mathematics (2022, shortlisted for the Runciman Award), all published by Cambridge University Press.
Reviews
'This volume is an amazing achievement, a commanding synthesis, a vast compendium of pages, an argument that demands to be contested. Every Classicist should read it.' Jaś Elsner, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
'... this work opens a new path for future scholarship. This engaging ... volume deserves a wide audience among classicists.' P. E. Ojennus, Choice
'... this work opens a new path for future scholarship. This engaging ... volume deserves a wide audience among classicists.' P. E. Ojennus, Choice