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The Poet's Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature

simon goldhill

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"The object of this book," writes the author in his Preface, "is to investigate how poetry and the figure of the poet are represented, discussed, contested within the poetry of ancient Greece." Dr. Goldhill seeks to discover how ancient authors broached the questions: From what position does a poet speak? With what authority? With what debts to the past? With what involvement in the present? Through a series of interrelated essays on Homer, lyric poetry, Aristophanes, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes, key aspects in the history of poetics are discussed: tale telling and the representation of man as the user of language; memorial and praise; parody, comedy and carnival; irony, masks and desire; the legacy of the past and the idea of influence. Detailed readings of major works of Greek literature show how richly rewarding and revealing this approach can be. The author makes liberal use of critical writings from areas of study other than Classics and focuses on problems central to contemporary critical debate. His book is uniquely placed to bring together modern and ancient poetics in a way that is enlightening for both. The work is written as much for the serious scholar of literary criticism as for the Classicist.
    Genres

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1990

This edition

Format
384 pages, Paperback
Published
November 30, 1990 by Cambridge University Press
ISBN
9780521395700
ASIN
0521395704
Language
English

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About the author

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simon goldhill

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Simon David Goldhil is Professor in Greek literature and culture and fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at King's College, Cambridge. He was previously Director of Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, succeeding Mary Jacobus in October 2011. He is best known for his work on Greek tragedy.
In 2009, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2010, he was appointed as the John Harvard Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at Cambridge, a research position held concurrently with his chair in Greek.
In 2016, he became a fellow of the British Academy. He is a member of the Council of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, and is President of the European Institutes for Advanced Study (NetIAS).
Goldhill is a well-known lecturer and broadcaster and has appeared on television and radio in England, Australia, the United States and Canada. His books have been translated into ten languages, and he has been profiled by newspapers in Brazil, Australia and the Netherlands.

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kikimota
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April 1,2025
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The early chapters on Homer are highly derivative, the Theocritus chapter is almost unreadable at times but he provides a necessary corrective to didactic readings of Aristophanes. The Pindar chapter is possibly derivative but seems to be presciently close to modern consensus otherwise. Goldhill's unsure about his deconstructionism here for some reason, maybe because his earlier attempts just emphasized textual uncertainty and lacked critical edge; certainly the Pindar reading lacks radicalism. Valuable for me, taught me a lot particularly on unfamiliar Hellenistic poetry.
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