ANCIENT LITERARY TEXTS AND THE HISTORIAN: CHALLENGES AND APPROACHES

• Autor(a) principal: Martins Esteves, Anderson de Araujo
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Cadernos do LEPAARQ
• Texto Completo: http://periodicos.ufpel.edu.br/ojs2/index.php/lepaarq/article/view/5672
• topic: História; Literatura antiga, gêneros literários, história antiga; Ancient literature, literary genres, Ancient History.

When approaching literary and paraliterary texts in Classical Antiquity, the historian faces a double challenge. First, the language in which they were originally written represents a non-negligible obstacle, which one can only partially overcome by means of a translation. Second, and no less important, to place the text in a grid of genres and literary epochs, which work as landmarks helping to understand each document in its aesthetical context of production. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the notions of genre and literary epoch, to propose a general view of the ancient literary system and to indicate how texts related to different genres must have different interpretation and evaluation.