The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava Supplementum) - Hardcover

Kraus, Christina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004106707 ISBN 13: 9789004106703

Publisher: Brill Academic Pub, 1999

Synopsis

This volume explores the intersection between historiography and related genres in antiquity. Papers cover the geographical range from China through the near east to the classical period in the Mediterranean. Topics addressed include the place in ancient Chinese historiography of philosophical argument; the nature and kind of historical text in the Hittite, Babylonian, Persian and biblical periods, including (for the first time) a full transliteration and translation of the Old Hittite story of Anum-hirbi and Zalpa, and a new interpretation of the Darius inscription at Behistun; and the relation of rhetorical stratagems and theory to Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. Contributors also consider the relationship between texts, including the war narratives of Herodotus and Thucydides, and the propriety of different schemes of generic classification.

About this title

About the Author

Christina Shuttleworth Kraus, Ph.D. (1988) in Classical Philology, Harvard University, is CUF Lecturer in the University of Oxford and Munro Fellow and Tutor in Classical Languages and Literature at Oriel College, Oxford. She has published books and papers on Roman historiography and on Greek tragic narrative, and is working on a commentary on Caesar, De bello gallico VII.

Review

'...this is an extremely rich volume. It offers not only provocative and important studies of individual historians, but a range of ideas on narrative technique which may productively be applied in our readings of other historical texts.'
Neville Morley, The Classical Review, 2000.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 9004106707
• ISBN 13: 9789004106703
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 363
• Editor: Kraus