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Walde (C.) (ed.) Brill's New Pauly, Supplements 5: the Reception of Classical Literature . In collaboration with Brigitte Egger. Translated and edited by Duncan Smart and Matthijs H. Wibier . Pp. xxii + 596, ills. Leiden and Boston : Brill , 2012 (originally published as Die Rezeption der antiken Literatur, 2010). Cased, [euro]195, US$271. ISBN: 978-90-04-21893-2 .
Reviews
RECEPTION IN THE NEW PAULY
The precise way any 'work' can be said to exist, and persist, is a central question for many disciplines beyond Classics. Some might already see a problem simply in this volume's encyclopedic context, which appears to have already answered that question by assuming that stable, autonomous 'texts' can travel through time via their continuous refashioning. Regardless of approach, a book whose goal is to survey the reception of all ancient texts, worldwide, in all forms, from the moment of 'text-creation' to the present, is of interest as a collection, if nothing else, for the challenge this represents.
The practical utility of this volume as a work of reference, however, is variously compromised. First, it must avoid overlap with Brill's considerable existing output on classical reception: both the multi-volume coverage of the 'Classical Tradition' in the main Neue Pauly series (Vols 16-20), and four previous 'Supplements', including The Reception of Myth and Mythology (Supp. 4), and the Dictionary of Greek and Latin Authors and Texts (Supp. 2) which covers textual transmission. The reception of Sophocles' OT, for example, accordingly does not receive attention in these 600-odd pages (cf. Supp. 4); and summary data about when and where copies, translations and publications of ancient texts were available, to whom, and in what form, is here not readily available (cf. Supp. 2). Second, although W. acknowledges the many questions raised by the book's premise, she sees the gap it addresses as the opportunity to demonstrate precisely the 'continuous currents' which such a bold scope might make visible, since other reception studies have tended to focus only on single authors, works, periods or media. To this end, contributors (asked to write entries organised by ancient author, rather than text) were...