The Teaching Poet

Born 1989; 2020 PhD in Classics and Comparative Literature from Stanford University; 2022 DAAD Visiting Researcher at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Honorary Research Fellow (Cultore della Materia) at the University of Padova.

• 1. Introduction1.1 Criticism of ancient genres1.2 Approaches to Hellenistic didactic poetry1.3 Structure of the workPart A. Theory of the didactic form2. The idea of didactic2.1 The term didascalicus in antiquity2.2 Theories of the didactic genre in the eighteenth century2.3 Ancient didactic poems in the eighteenth century2.4 Didactic poems in antiquity: The earliest discourses about genre and canon2.5 Beyond the construct of didacticism3. Hellenistic didactic poems: Forms and contexts3.1 How didactic poems teach: the concept of expository rhetoric3.2 A booming genre: survey of didactic poems from the Hellenistic period3.3 Performing didactic poems in the Hellenistic periodPart B. The Hellenistic didactic poems4. A lesson in haute cuisine: Archestratus of Gela4.1 Knowledge, rhetoric and literary culture in the fourth century B.C.4.2 Facts and rhetoric: displaying knowledge in the Hedypatheia5. Recounting the stars: Aratus of Soli5.1 Framing and concealing the exposition in the Phaenomena5.2 Aratus’ expository rhetoric and the ambivalent addressee5.3 Conclusions: Aratus and the modes of expository rhetoric6. Useful verses: Nicander, Apollodorus and Pseudo-Scymnus6.1 Nicander6.2 Apollodorus, Pseudo-Scymnus and the epitome of factsConclusion