Ebook: The Oxford handbook of the Second Sophistic

The Second Sophistic refers to a revival of the teaching and practice of Greek rhetoric in the second century AD, and to the general cultural flourishing in the Greek east during Rome's high empire. Although the term may have been first coined by Flavius Philostratus in the second or third century AD, the study of the Second Sophistic is a relative newcomer to the Anglophone field of classics, and much of what characterizes it temporally and culturally remains a matter of legitamate contestation. The Oxford handbook of the Second Sophistic offers a diversity of scholarly voices that attempt to define the state of this rapidly developing field. Chapters offer practical guidance on the wide range of valuable textual materials that survive, many of which are relevant to inquiries of particularly current interest (e.g. gender studies, cultural history of the body, sociology of literary culture, history of education and intellectualism, history of religion, political theory, history of medicine, cultural linguistics, and the intersection of classical traditions and early Christianity). The Handbook also contains essays devoted to the work of the most significant intellectuals of the period, including Plutarch, Dio Chrysontom, Lucian, Apuleius, the novelists, the Philostrati, and Aelius Aristides. In addition to probiding content and bibliographical guidance, this volume situates the textual remains within their historical and cultural contexts. The Handbook therefore devotes considerable space to various contextual essays, and throughout tries to examine these authors from a wide cultural perspective. In its scope and in its pluralism of voices, this Handbook represents a new approach to the Second Sophistic, one that integrates Greek literature of the Roman period into the wider world o ancient Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian cultural production.;I. Introductory. 1: Periodicity and Scope, William A. Johnson & Daniel S. Richter ; 2: Greece: Hellenistic and Early Imperial Continuities, Tim Whitmarsh ; 3: Was There a Latin Second Sophistic?, Tom Habinek ; II. Language and Identity. 4: Atticism and Asianism, Lawrence Kim ; 5: Latinitas, Martin Bloomer ; 6: Cosmopolitanism, D.S. Richter ; 7: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity, Emma Dench ; 8: Retrosexuality: Sex in the Second Sophistic, Amy Richlin ; III. Paideia and Performance. 9: Schools and Paideia, Ruth Webb ; 10: Athletes and Trainers, Jason Koenig ; 11: Professionals of Paideia? The Sophists as Performers, Thomas A. Schmitz ; 12: Performance Space, Edmund Thomas ; IV. Rhetoric and Rhetoricians. 13: Greek and Latin Rhetorical Culture, Laurent Pernot ; 14: Dio Chrysostom, Claire Jackson ; 15: Favorinus and Herodes Atticus, Leofranc Holford-Strevens ; 16: Fronto and his Circle, Pascale Fleury ; 17: Aelius Aristides, Estelle Oudot ; V. Literature and Culture. 18: Philostratus, Graeme Miles ; 19: Plutarch: Philosophy, Religion, and Ethics ; 20: Plutarch's Lives, Paolo Desideri ; 21: Lucian of Samosata, Daniel S. Richter ; 22: Apuleius, S.J. Harrison ; 23: Pausanias, William Hutton ; 24: Galen, Susan Mattern ; 25: Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus, J.R. Morgan ; 26: Longus and Achilles Tatius, Froma Zeitlin ; 27: The Anti-Sophistic Novel, Dan Selden ; 28: Miscellanies, Katerina Oikonomopoulou ; 29: Mythography, Stephen Trzaskoma ; 30: Historiography, Sulo Asirvatham ; 31: Poets and Poetry, Manuel Baumbach ; 32: Epistolography, Owen Hodkinson ; VI. Philosophy and Philosophers. 33: The Stoics, Gretchen Reydams-Schils ; 34: Epicureanism Writ Large: Diogenes of Oenoanda, Pamela Gordon ; 35: Skepticism, Richard Bett ; 36: Platonism, Ryan C. Fowler ; 37: The Aristotelian Tradition, Han Baltussen ; VII. Religion and Religious Literature. 38: Cult, Marietta Horster ; 39: Pilgrimage, Ian Rutherford ; 40: Early Christianity and the Classical Tradition ; 41: Jewish Literature, Eric Gruen ; 42: The Creation of Christian Elite Culture in Roman Syria and the Near East, William Adler ; 43: Christian Apocrypha, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson.