Theodōros D. Papangelēs Boeken

This volume on Appolonius of Rhodes, whose "Argonautica" is the sole full-length epic to survive from the Hellenistic period, comprises articles by 14 scholars from across Europe and America. Their contributions cover a wide range of issues from the history of the text and the problems of the poet's biography through questions of style, literary technique and intertextual relations to the epic's library and cultural reception. The aim is to give an outline of the scholarly discussion in these areas and provide a survey of trends in Apollonian studies.

Neither older empiricist positions that genre is an abstract concept, useless for the study of individual works of literature, nor the recent (post) modern reluctance to subject literary production to any kind of classification seem to have stilled the discussion on the various aspects of genre in classical literature. Having moved from more or less essentialist and/or prescriptive positions towards a more dynamic conception of the generic model, research on genre is currently considering „pushing beyond the boundaries“, „impurity“, „instability“, „enrichment“ and „genre-bending“. The aim of this volume is to raise questions of such generic mobility in Latin literature. The papers explore ways in which works assigned to a particular generic area play host to formal and substantive elements associated with different or even opposing genres; assess literary works which seem to challenge perceived generic norms; highlight, along the literary-historical, the ideological and political backgrounds to „dislocations“ of the generic map.