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Greek literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2023

Malcolm Heath
Malcolm Heath*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds, UK
*
M.F.Heath@Leeds.ac.uk
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Extract

If you cast your mind back to 2016 you may (or may not) recall Brill's Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis: a substantial volume, comprising thirty-two chapters in 754 pages of text, together with twenty-six pages of preliminaries, seventy-seven pages of bibliography, and forty-one pages of indices. Prudent readers should be cautious when handling a blockbuster volume on this scale; the risk of dropping one and a half kilos of scholarly text on one's foot is not to be treated with careless abandon. There is, then, something to be said in favour of less demanding but more accessible starting points for the exploration of the Nonnian landscape. For most readers, Robert Shorrock's The Challenge of Epic. Allusive Engagement in the Dionysiaca (2001) and The Myth of Paganism. Nonnus, Dionysus and the World of Late Antiquity (2011) would provide a more readily accessible resource. Admittedly, accessible guidance is not easy to find when it has been swamped by a tsunami of impressive editorial scholarship: for example, Konstantinos Spanoudakis, Nonnus of Panopolis in Context; Camille Geisz, A Study of the Narrator in Nonnus of Panopolis’ Dionysiaca. Storytelling in Late Antique Epic; Herbert Bannert and Nicole Kröll's Nonnus of Panopolis in Context II. Poetry, Religion, and Society; and Filip Doroszewski and Katarzyna Jażdżewska's Nonnus of Panopolis in Context III. Old Questions and New Perspectives. As for Nonnus’ Paraphrase of John's Gospel, I confess that I have barely had time to glance at it in its entirety. Perhaps I should have been paying more selective attention to Nonnus, and less to everything else.

Type
Subject Reviews
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , October 2023 , pp. 309 - 313
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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References

1 Brill's Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis. Edited by Domenico Accorinti. Leiden, Brill, 2016. Pp. xxxii + 872, Hardback £179, ISBN: 978-90-04-31011-7.

2 The Challenge of Epic. Allusive Engagement in the Dionysiaca. By Robert Shorrock. Leiden, Brill, 2001. Pp. vii + 245. Hardback £179, ISBN: 978-90-04-11795-2.

3 The Myth of Paganism. Nonnus, Dionysus, and the World of Late Antiquity. By Robert Shorrock. Bristol Classical Press, 2011. Pp. x + 181. Paperback £19.99, ISBN: 978-0-7156-3668-8.

4 Nonnus of Panopolis in Context. Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity with a Section on Nonnus and the Modern World. Edited by Konstantinos Spanoudakis. Leiden, Brill, 2014. Trends in Classics: Supplementary Volumes. Hardback £109, ISBN: 978-3-11-033937-6.

5 A Study of the Narrator in Nonnus of Panopolis’ Dionysiaca. Storytelling in Late Antique Epic. By Camille Geisz. Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology, 25. Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2017. Pp. ix + 282. Hardback €120, ISBN: 978-90-04-35533-0.

6 Nonnus of Panopolis in Context II. Poetry, Religion, and Society. Edited by Herbert Bannert and Nicole Kröll. Mnemosyne Supplements, 408. Leiden, Brill, 2017. Pp. xviii + 436. Hardback €121, ISBN: 978-90-04-34119-7.

7 Nonnus of Panopolis in Context III. Old Questions and New Perspectives. Edited by Filip Doroszewski and Katarzyna Jażdżewska. Mnemosyne Supplements, 438. Leiden, Brill, 2020. Pp. 552. Hardback €135, ISBN: 978-90-04-44323-5.

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13 Desire in the Iliad. The Force that Moves the Epic and its Audience. By Rachel H. Lesser. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. x + 270. Hardback £75, ISBN: 978-0-19-286651-6.

14 Beyond Death in the Oresteia. Poetics, Ethics, and Politics. By Amit Shilo. New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. x + xii. Hardback £75, ISBN: 978-1-108-83274-8.

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