The Poetry of Anacreon (Masterplots, Definitive Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Anacreon
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Poetry or poets, Death or dying, Drinking or drunkenness, Greek or Roman times, Greece or Greek people
Critical Evaluation:
The historian Eusebius states that Anacreon of Teos, the lyric poet who wrote elegiac and iambic verse in the Ionic Greek dialect, flourished during the sixty-second Olympiad (532-529 b.c.e.) Many “Anacreontic” poems are really later imitations of his work erroneously attributed to Anacreon after his death. Erotic love, not necessarily heterosexual, is one of his main themes, as in his short poem, “I lust for Cleobulus, I am mad for Cleobulus, I gaze at Cleobulus.” He sings customarily of the pleasures of the senses as he says in a fragment that...
[The entire page is 603 words long]
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