Reviel Netz (Stanford) - "Scale, Space, Canon: Parameters of Ancient Literary Practice"

Professor Netz will talk about his monograph, recently submitted to Cambridge University Press, “Scale, Space, Canon: Parameters of Ancient Literary Practice”. At its core, the monograph discusses a question: why was ancient Greek culture indebted to the legacy of the democratic polis, even though most of it was produced within Hellenistic and Roman monarchies? More widely, this monograph offers a history of ancient literary culture – the belletristic and technical traditions, all taken together – from the classical era to late antiquity. This is pursued through a somewhat “quantitative” methodology, looking at such questions as the precise structure of the literary field, the geography of cultural production, and the scale of authorship – and the consequences of such parameters for the history of culture.

Lunch is provided at 12:15pm.