"First published as Geschichte der Griechischen Literatur by Francke Verlag, Bern"--T.p. verso.

Offers profiles of ancient Greek writers, including Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch, and traces the development of Greek literature.

This book offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of ancient Greek literature from Homer to Late Antiquity. Its clear structure and detailed presentation of Greek authors and their works as well as literary genres and phenomena makes it an indispensable reference work for all those interested in Greek Antiquity, particularly well-suited for use in the classroom.

A Short History of Greek Literature provides a concise yet comprehensive survey of Greek literature - from Christian authors - over twelve centuries, from Homer's epics to the rich range of authors surviving from the imperial period up to Justinian. The book is divided into three parts. The first part is devoted to the extraordinary creativity of the archaic and classical age, when the major literary genres - epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, oratory and philosophy - were invented and flourished. The second part covers the Hellenistic period, and the third covers the High Empire and Late Antiquity. At that tine the masters of the previous age were elevated to the rank of 'classics'. The works of the imperial period are replete with literary allusions, yet full of references to contemporary reality.

The most up-to-date history of Greek literature from its Homeric origins to the age of Augustus. Greek literary production throughout this period of some eight centuries is embedded in its historical and social context, and Professor Dihle sees this literature as a historical phenomenon, a particular mode of linguistic communication, with its specific forms developing both in an organic way and in response to the changing world around. In this it differs from conventional humanist approaches to Greek and Latin literature which analyse the works as objects of timeless value independent of any historical setting or purpose. This magisterial survey by one of the leading European authorities on classical literature will establish itself, as it already has in Germany, as the standard account of the subject.

A History of Greek Literature