Callimachus Revisited

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.