Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity: Problems of Authority from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance: 385 (Beitrage zur Altertumskunde, 385) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3110684551 ISBN 13: 9783110684551

Publisher: De Gruyter, 2020

Synopsis

This volume explores the themes of authorship and authenticity – and connected issues – from the Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance. Its reflection is constructed within a threefold framework. A first section includes topics dealing with dubious or uncertain attribution of ancient works, homonymous writers, and problems regarding the reliability of compilation literature. The middle section goes through several issues concerning authorship: the balance between the author’s contribution to their own work and the role of collaborators, pupils, circles, reviewers, scribes, and even older sources, but also the influence of different compositional stages on the concept of ‘author’, and the challenges presented by anonymous texts. Finally, a third crucial section on authenticity and forgeries concludes the book: it contains contributions dealing with spurious works – or sections of works – , mechanisms of interpolation, misattribution, and deliberate forgery. The aim of the book is therefore to exemplify the many nuances of the complex problems of authenticity and authorship of ancient texts.

About this title

About the Author

R. Berardi, University of Oxford, UK; M. Filosa, University of Cologne, Germany; D. Massimo, University of Oxford, UK.

Edition details

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3110684551
• ISBN 13: 9783110684551
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 350
• Editor: Berardi