Theocritus (early third century BCE), born in Syracuse and also active on Cos and at Alexandria, was the inventor of the bucolic genre. Like his contemporary Callimachus, Theocritus was a learned poet who followed the aesthetic, developed a generation earlier by Philitas of Cos, of refashioning traditional literary forms in original ways through tightly organized and highly polished work on a small scale (thus the traditional generic title Idylls: “little forms”). Although Theocritus composed in a variety of genres or generic combinations, including encomium, epigram, hymn, mime, and epyllion, he is best known for the poems set in the countryside, mostly dialogues or song-contests, that combine lyric tone with epic meter and the Doric dialect of his native Sicily to create an idealized and evocatively described pastoral landscape, whose lovelorn inhabitants, presided over by the Nymphs, Pan, and Priapus, use song as a natural mode of expression.
The bucolic/pastoral genre was developed by the second and third members of the Greek bucolic canon, Moschus (fl. mid second century BCE, also from Syracuse) and Bion (fl. some fifty years later, from Phlossa near Smyrna), and remained vital through Greco-Roman antiquity and into the modern era.
Together with Megara, The Dead Adonis and the so-called “pattern poems” included in the bucolic tradition.
Theocritus, Moschus, Bion / Loeb Classical Library
Loeb Classical Library 28, The Greek Bucolic Poets. In one volume. Translated by J. M. Edmonds.
Out of stock
Isbn
0674990315
€20.00
- Condition / Etat: good, dust jacket with minor shelf wear, minor spotting / bon état, minimes traces d'usures.
- Volumes : 1 volume.
- Binding / Reliure : original green titled cloth with fine dust jacket, cartonné avec jaquette.
- Format : In-16 / 17 x 11 cm.
- Pages : XXVIII, 526 pp.
- Editor : Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
- Date : 1991.
- Language / Langue: Ancient Grec and English on opposite pages / Bilingue grec et anglais.
Condition | Used - Very Good |
---|---|
Language | United Kingdom |
Illustrated | No |
Publicaton Date | 1 Jan 1991 |
Year | 1991 |
Author / Cartographer / Photographer | Bion, Moschos, Theocritus |
Editor | Harvard University Press |
First edition | No |
Signed edition | No |
Signed binding | No |
Armorial binding | No |
Binding / Format | Hardcover |
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