Download or read book Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry written by Monica Gale and published by Classical Press of Wales. This book was released on 2004-12-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is it possible for a poet to find his own individual voice, when he is writing in a tradition so venerable and so constrained by convention as Roman epic? How do poets working in related genres - particularly didactic - conceptualize their relationship to the main epic tradition? The eleven essays in this volume, by leading scholars in the field of Roman poetry and its post-Classical receptions, consider some of the strategies which writers from Lucretius onwards have employed in negotiating their relationship with their literary forebears, and staking out a place for their own work within a tradition stretching back to Hesiod and Homer.