Kathryn Gutzwiller

Bio: Kathryn Gutzwiller is an academic researcher from University of Cincinnati. The author has contributed to research in topics: Poetry & Meleager. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 30 publications receiving 689 citations.

Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context

Abstract: Epigrams, the briefest of Greek poetic forms, had a strong appeal for readers of the Hellenistic period (323-31 B.C.). One of the most characteristic literary forms of the era, the epigram, unlike any other ancient or classical form of poetry, was not only composed for public recitation but was also collected in books intended for private reading. Brief and concise, concerned with the personal and the particular, the epigram emerged in the Hellenistic period as a sophisticated literary form that evinces the period's aesthetic preference for the miniature, the intricate, and the fragmented. Kathryn Gutzwiller offers the first full-length literary study of these important poems by studying the epigrams within the context of the poetry books in which they were originally collected. Drawing upon ancient sources as well as recent papyrological discoveries, Gutzwiller reconstructs the nature of Hellenistic epigram books and interprets individual poems as if they remained part of their original collections. This approach results in illuminating and original readings of many major poets, and demonstrates that individual epigrammatists were differentiated by gender, ethnicity, class status, and philosophical views. In an important final chapter, Gutzwiller reconstructs much of the poetic structure of Meleager's Garland, an ancient anthology of Hellenistic epigrams.

Seeing Thought: Timomachus' Medea and Ecphrastic Epigram

Abstract: F rom the time of Lessing, Timomachus' Medea, poised in a moment of agonizing indecision, has exemplified the essential qualities of art, its spatial fixity and indeterminacy of meaning. I study this famous painting, based on a surviving Euripidean passage and still knowable through Roman descendants, as a rare example of transmutation from text to image and then again from image to text. The principal literary texts concerning the painting are a series of ecphrastic epigrams in which Timomachus' interpretation of Euripides is mediated by the cultural discourse about Medea begun within Stoic ethical theory. My larger goal is to illuminate the interrelationship of text and image by showing how the painted image displays or encodes discursive meaning and the ecphrastic texts encourage a mental image of the painting in a certain viewing circumstance. THE WESTERN AESTHETIC TRADITION is largely informed by the anal- ogy between verbal and visual arts, first and most famously formulated in Simonides' image of painting as silent poetry and poetry as articulate painting. 1 But even in antiquity, there were objections to the seductive simplicity of this formulation. Plutarch (Mor. 346f-47a) points out that, although painting and poetry have the same goal of delineating events, they differ in their material and means since one employs color and shape and the other words and phrases. The paradox that poetry and painting seem like sister arts and yet offer radically different modes of representation has remained a fundamental problem in aesthetic theory down to the current day. W. J. T. Mitchell, in advocating a move away from the traditional reification of the word-image dichotomy as a feature of nature to more historically based criticism, suggests that cultures create their worlds out of "the dialogue between verbal and pictorial representations." He proposes that, within a given culture, the relation

A guide to Hellenistic literature

Abstract: Preface. List of Illustrations. 1 History and Culture. 1.1 The Successors. 1.2 Macedonia and Greece. 1.3 Seleucid Asia. 1.4 Attalid Pergamum. 1.5 Ptolemaic Egypt. 2 Aesthetics and Style. 2.1 Aesthetic Principles. 2.2 Meter, Dialect, and Diction. 2.3 Literature as Artefact. 3 Authors and Genres. 3.1 Menander. 3.2 Callimachus. 3.3 Apollonius. 3.4 Theocritus and the Other Bucolic Poets. 3.5 Didactic Poetry. 3.6 Epigrams. 3.7 Dramatic Poetry. 3.8 Parodic and Philosophical Literature. 3.9 Polybius. 3.10 Technical Prose Writing. 4 Topics in Hellenistic Literature. 4.1 Learning and Innovation. 4.2 Book Culture and Performance. 4.3 Social and Political Background. 4.4 The Critical Impulse. 4.5 Reception in Rome. Suggested Reading. Bibliography. Index

Theocritus' Pastoral Analogies: The Formation of a Genre

Abstract: The author uses the "Idylls" of Theocritus to show us the formative processes at work in the creation of a literary genre - the pastoral - and how the very structure of a genre both shapes and limits judgments about it. Gutzwiller argues that Theocritus' position as the first pastoralist has haunted critical assessments of him. Was he merely a beginner, whose simple descriptions of country life were reworked by Virgil into poems of imagination and tender feeling? Or was he a genius of great creative ability, who first found the way to encapsulate in humble detail a metaphysical vision of man's emotional core? Examining Theocritus from the point of view of "beginnings", Gutzwiller places him both within his native Greek intellectual tradition and within the tradition of critical commentary on pastoral. Gutzwiller provides an analysis of the herdsman figure in pre-Hellenistic Greek literature, showing that the simple shepherd or goatherd had long been used as a figure of analogy for characters of higher rank. Theocritus was the first poet to focus on the shepherd himself and bring the analogies down into the pastoral world. Through her analyses of the seven pastoral Idylls, Guttzwiller demonstrates that in turning the focus on the shepherd Theocritus created a group of literary works with an inner structure so unique that later readers considered it a new genre. In her conclusion Gutzwiller explores subsequent controversies about the pastoral, from ancient to modern times, revealing how they continue to reflect the structural pattern that originated in Theocritus's poetry.

Tradition and innovation in Hellenistic poetry

Abstract: Hellenistic poets of the third and second centuries BC were concerned with the need both to mark their continuity with the classical past and to demonstrate their independence from it. In this revised and expanded translation of Muse e modelli: la poesia ellenistica da Alessandro Magno ad Augusto, Greek poetry of the third and second centuries BC and its reception and influence at Rome are explored allowing both sides of this literary practice to be appreciated. Genres as diverse as epic and epigram are considered from a historical perspective, in the full range of their deep-level structures, providing a different perspective on the poetry and its influence at Rome. Some of the most famous poetry of the age such as Callimachus' Aitia and Apollonius' Argonautica is examined. In addition, full attention is paid to the poetry of encomium, in particular the newly published epigrams of Posidippus, and Hellenistic poetics, notably Philodemus.

Popular Morality in the Early Roman Empire

Abstract: Morality is one of the fundamental structures of any society, enabling complex groups to form, negotiate their internal differences and persist through time. In the first book-length study of Roman popular morality, Dr Morgan argues that we can recover much of the moral thinking of people across the Empire. Her study draws on proverbs, fables, exemplary stories and gnomic quotations, to explore how morality worked as a system for Roman society as a whole and in individual lives. She examines the range of ideas and practices and their relative importance, as well as questions of authority and the relationship with high philosophy and the ethical vocabulary of documents and inscriptions. The Roman Empire incorporated numerous overlapping groups, whose ideas varied according to social status, geography, gender and many other factors. Nevertheless it could and did hold together as an ethical community, which was a significant factor in its socio-political success.

Word and Image. French Painting of the Ancien Regime

Abstract: List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements 1. Discourse, figure 2. The legible body: LeBrun 3. Watteau and reverie 4. Transformations in rococo space 5. Greuze and the pursuit of happiness 6. Diderot and the word 7. Diderot and the image 8. 1785 Conclusion: style or sign? Notes List of societies affiliated to CINOA Select bibliography Index.