Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond : Knowledge, Power, Tradition

Here ten scholars examine poetic texts of wisdom and teaching related to the line of Greek and Latin poems descended from Hesiod. Previous scholarship has grappled with the near-total absence in ancient literary criticism of explicit discussion of didactic as a discrete genre and as a result has often focused on defining and classifying didactic poetry. The present volume approaches didactic texts from different perspectives: the diachronic, mapping the development of didactic through changing social and political landscapes (from Homer and Hesiod to Neo-Latin didactic); and the comparative, setting the Graeco-Roman tradition against a wider backdrop (including ancient Near-Eastern and contemporary African traditions). Issues include knowledge in its relation to power; cognitive strategies of the didactic text; ethics and poetics; interplay of obscurity and clarity, playfulness and solemnity; authority of the teacher.