Iambic Ideas

Alessandro Barchiesi is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Verona, Italy. Antonio Aloni is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Torino, Italy. Alberto Cavarzere is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Trento, Italy.

• Chapter 1 Early Greek Iambic Poetry: The Importance of NarrativeChapter 2 What Is That Man Doing in SapphoChapter 3 Iambic Motifs in Alcaeus' LyricsChapter 4 Iambic Patterns in Aristophanic ComedyChapter 5 Callimachus 4: From Performance to WritingChapter 6 Iambic Presences in Ennius's SaturaeChapter 7 Catullian iambics, Catullian iambiChapter 8 Horace and Iambos: The Poet as Literary HistorianChapter 9 Some Generic Problems in Horace's Epodes: or On (Not) Being ArchilochusChapter 10 Epode 14: Horace's carmen inconditum?Chapter 11 Ego polivi versibus senariis: Phaedrus and Iambic PoetryChapter 12 Late Antique Iambics and iambikè idéa

With its judicious sampling of topics, each developed in impressive detail, Iambic Ideas itself rates as a perfectly brilliant idea. The book provides a much-needed sense of 'iambic' as a self-standing generic enterprise within the literatures of Greece and Rome, poetry that both writes and plays by its own rules. The book is thus a first of its kind, and fundamental to the study of verse invective in antiquity.