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The Περὶ ποιητῶν Literature. A General Outline and Survey of the Extant Fragments

  • Marco Pelucchi ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 16, 2024
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Abstract

The Greek manuscript tradition transmits various fragments of works with the title Περὶ ποιητῶν, composed by both philosophers and grammarians from the Classical to the Imperial periods. The aim of this paper is to analyse these surviving fragments with a view to delineating the contents, forms, and characteristics of this type of literature. In the first part, I propose a survey of all authors and fragments of ancient Greek works On Poets. The second section outlines their literary-historical profile. Based on comparison with ancient works treating similar topics, I suggest a unitary reading of the writings Περὶ ποιητῶν. Through a combination of biographical, exegetical, theoretical, and (perhaps) technical information, this type of literature appears to have comprised the earliest “histories” of ancient poetry.

Acknowledgements

Work on the present article was conducted in the context of the C1-project “Biography, History and Philosophy in the 3rd Century BCE Peripatos: The Case of Hieronymos of Rhodes” (C14/21/025). The project is funded by the Interne Fondsen KU Leuven/Internal Funds KU Leuven. I should like to thank Stefan Schorn, to whom I also owe the idea for this paper, Tiziano Dorandi, and Pietro Zaccaria for reading an earlier draft version and discussing numerous aspects with me. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees of Trends in Classics for their remarks and suggestions.

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