Plutarch: How to Study Poetry (De audiendis poetis)

Plutarch's essay 'How to Study Poetry' offers a set of reading practices intended to remove the potential damage that poetry can do to the moral health of young readers. It opens a window on to a world of ancient education and scholarship which can seem rather alien to those brought up in the highly sophisticated world of modern literary theory and criticism. The full Introduction and Commentary, by two of the world's leading scholars in the field, trace the origins and intellectual affiliations of Plutarch's method and fully illustrate the background to each of his examples. As such this book may serve as an introduction to the whole subject of ancient reading practices and literary criticism. The Commentary also pays particular attention to grammar, syntax and style, and sets this essay within the context of Plutarch's thought and writing more generally.

First full commentary on this unusually fascinating text
Offers full help with grammar, syntax and style to help student readers
Provides a wide range of background material and context, enabling the book to serve as an introduction to the whole range of ancient reading practices and literary criticism

Reviews & endorsements

"This edition by Richard Hunter and Donald Russell of Plutarch’s major treatise on education and literature represents the Cambridge "Green and Yellow" commentaries at their best. It provides a wealth of information on sources, parallels, style, and the structure of the argument, yet does not neglect the needs of the mid-level student of Greek, helpfully explaining abstruse words and difficult expressions … Hunter and Russell have produced a major work of scholarship, invaluable for understanding ancient ideas of literature and its function. It belongs in the library of anyone interested in how the ancients read."
Classical World

"It is one of the most informative and intriguing of the studies on ancient reading that I have encountered in some years."
Peter Toohey, Comptes Rendus

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Published: No date available
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ISBN: 9781316138380
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Contents

Introduction
Text
Commentary
Bibliography
General index
Index of passages discussed.

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About the authors

Plutarch

Editors

Richard Hunter , University of Cambridge
Richard Hunter is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, where he has taught since 1978, and a Fellow of Trinity College. His most recent books include The Shadow of Callimachus (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Critical Moments in Classical Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Many of his essays have been collected in On Coming After: Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception (2008). He holds an honorary degree from the University of Thessaloniki, and is a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Donald Russell , University of Oxford
Donald Russell taught ancient literature at St John's College, Oxford for many years, and is one of the world's best known scholars in the fields of ancient criticism and rhetoric. Among his many publications, of particular relevance to the current project are his editions of Longinus' 'On the Sublime' (published 1964) and Quintilian (published 2001), and the monographs Plutarch (2nd edition, 2001) and Criticism in Antiquity (2nd edition, 2001). He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 1971.

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