In the Mists of Time: Negotiating the Past in Ancient Literature

Download or read book In the Mists of Time: Negotiating the Past in Ancient Literature written by Franco Montanari and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-10-07 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of the past, far from suggesting a nostalgic longing or an antiquarian curiosity for ages and cultures irrevocably lost, is essential to the human perception of the world. The volume at hand, entitled In the Mists of Time: Negotiating the Past in Ancient Literature, explores pastness as expressed through myth and early history and as reflected in sophisticated concepts and epistemological questions in Ancient Greek and Latin literature. The eighteen contributions illustrate how the ancients addressed the past through poetry, history and philosophy and lend insight into the metaliterary, self-reflexive way of dealing with past texts through scholarship.