Includes bibliographical references (pages 337-361) and indexes.
Contents:
Introduction: After Herodotus -- The Ethics of Authorship: Herodotus in the Rhetorical Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus -- Dionysius's Global Herodotus -- Parallel Authors: Plutarch's "Life" of Herodotus -- Hellenism in the Distance: Herodotean Fringes in Dio's Borystheniticus -- Removable Eyes: Lucian and the Truths of Herodotus -- Anacharsis at Border Control -- Acts of God: Pausanias Divines Herodotus -- Pausanias in Wonderland -- Epilogue: Herodotus without End.
Summary:
"Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature is the first monograph devoted to the reception of Herodotus among Imperial Greek writers. Using a broad reception model and focused largely on texts outside of historiography proper, this book analyzes the entanglements of criticism and imitation in select works by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Dio of Prusa, Lucian, and Pausanias. It offers a new angle on Herodotus's intellectual afterlife, channeled through evocations both explicit and implicit in literary criticism, the moral essay, public oration, satire and periegetic literature. Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature shifts focus from reputation only - what ancient authors explicitly had to say about Herodotus - toward the kinetic interrelation between Herodotus's reputation and his active reworking across genre and mode. It demonstrates how Herodotus was strategically construed and often implicitly summoned - as fabulist, classicist, moralizer, and evasive intellectual - and how such Herodotean presences played to the wider purposes of Imperial writers. Herodotus became a touchstone for writers concerned with a nimbus of questions that the Histories first helped to articulate. Imperial Greeks found Herodotus useful in puzzling through questions of authorial persona, mimesis, the relationship between aesthetic and ethical criticism, the self, and the contingent definitions of Hellenism under Rome. Ultimately, Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature widens an incomplete reception history and reads bi-focally, examining how attention to the presence of Herodotus in various texts unveils new layers of meaning in those works, while also showing how ancient receptions offer insight into the Histories"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.