Preface

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Preface V
3. Contents VII
4. List of Figures XI
5. Part I: Concepts and Aesthetics of Ambiguity
6. Modern and Ancient Concepts of Ambiguity 1
7. Aristotle on Ambiguity 11
8. Intended Ambiguity in Plato’s Phaedo 29
9. The Ambiguity of the Unambiguous: Figures of Death in Late Medieval Literature 43
10. The Modern Perspective: Ambiguity, Artistic Self-Reference, and the Autonomy of Art 61
11. Part II: Playing with Linguistic Ambiguity
12. Traversing No-Man’s Land 81
13. The Ambiguity of Wisdom: Mētis in the Odyssey 91
14. Borges in Alexandria? Modes of Ambiguity in Hellenistic Poetry 101
15. Sympotic Sexuality: The Ambiguity of Seafood in Middle Comedy (Nausicrates fr. 1 K.-A.) 123
16. Liber esto – Wordplay and Ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyrica 141
17. Part III: Ambiguous Narratives
18. Half Heroes? Ambiguity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 157
19. Underneath the Arachnean and Minervan Veil of Ambiguity: Cultural and Political Simulatio in Ovidian Ecphrasis 175
20. Ambigua Verba, Hidden Desire and Auctorial Intentionality in Some Ovidian Speeches (Met. 3.279−92; 7.810−23; 10.364−6, 440−1) 193
21. The Pleasures of Ambiguity: Aristomenes’ Tale of Socrates in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 207
22. Legens. Ambiguity, Syllepsis and Allegory in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae 219
23. Part IV: Ambiguity as Argument
24. Between Conversion and Madness: Sophisticated Ambiguity in Lucian’s Nigrinus 237
25. Catullan Ambiguity 251
26. Prophetic, Poetic and Political Ambiguity in Vergil Eclogue 4 273
27. Vitae aut vocis ambigua: Seneca the Younger and Ambiguity 285
28. Who speaks? – Ambiguity and Vagueness in the Design of Cicero’s Dialogue Speakers 297
29. Unsettling Effects and Disconcertment — Strategies of Enacting Interpretations in Tacitusʼ Annals 315
30. The Latin Commentary Tradition on ‘Inclusive’ Intended Ambiguity 331
31. Part V: Ambiguous Receptions
32. Ambivalent Allegories: Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (1623) between Censorship and Hermeneutic Freedom 351
33. Multipliers of Ambiguity: The Use of Quotations in Cavafy’s Poems Concerning the Emperor Julian 365
34. Seven Perspectives of Ambiguity and the Problem of Intentionality 381
35. List of Contributors 405
36. General Index 411
37. Index of Passages 417