Hesiod: The Other Poet. Ancient Reception of a Cultural Icon (Mnemosyne Supplements - Volume 325)

Abstract

This is not a book about Hesiod. Instead of offering a historical appraisal of the poet or a literary analysis of his principal works, the present study examines the role of Hesiod in the ancient imagination. The central question is concerned with the way that Hesiod was given shape in the collective memory of the Greeks. Hence, this study deals with the processes of remembering and forgetting that created his image, with its meaning and relevance to Greek identity, andmore particularly with the different manifestations of his image inGreek literature.This book, then, is about ‘Hesiod’, it conceives of and investigates the poet as a concept in later literary-critical discourse, as a locusthat was informed with values and qualities, and more generally as a cultural icon constructed and reconstructed by later Greek authors who employed him in their own texts.The present study is thus concerned with the ancient reception of Hesiod, but its theoretical framework is mostly derived from collective or cultural memory studies. In the first section of this introduction, therefore, I will discuss some of the most important approaches and findings of this particular discipline. Section will thendemonstrate how helpful the main notions of memory theory can be in understanding and explaining the ancient imagination of Hesiod. In section, I will brieflydescribe howthis book is organized, while sectionpresents some preliminary findings of interest, and looks ahead to the rest of the book.