Callimachus Revisited: New Perspectives in Callimachean Scholarship

This special volume of the Hellenistica Groningana, in honour of the

achievements and career of Professor M.A. Harder, revisits the poetry of

Callimachus (theme of two earlier Hellenistic Workshops).

A number of renowned international scholars in the field of Hellenistic

studies reflect on new perspectives in Callimachean scholarship,

inspired among other by Annette Harder’s 2012 edition of Callimachus’

Aetia. Their questions aim to contextualize and analyze

Callimachus’ poetry in novel ways, inspired by both new literary theory

and historical insights and a solid body of existing scholarship. How do

Callimachus’ learned elegies relate to the genre of didactic poetry? How

do his aetiological narratives straddle the border between fiction and

reality? What is their basis in Hellenistic scholarship, and in Near

Eastern or Egyptian poetic traditions? How and why do later Greek poets

incorporate Callimachean poetics, and so facilitate his reception in

Latin poetry? What is Callimachus’ attitude to gods and divine rulers in

his hymnic poetry? These and many more questions are addressed, creating

new perspectives in Callimachean scholarship, as the title indicates.