Böcker av Gian Biagio Conte

In the first part of this volume on the literary technique of imitation, the author analyses Virgil's working over the text of Homer which paradoxically represents a true act of artistic originality. In the second chapter, the author reconstructs the presuppositions of a method and explores at the same time its limitations.

Together with "Critical Notes on Virgil" (De Gruyter 2016), this volume offers an enlightening complement to the critical text of the Georgics and the Aeneid recently published in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana. The different chapters tackle important questions of textual criticism and Virgilian style, and propose new answers to inveterate problems.

Conceived as a sort of Prolegomena to his two Teubner editions, the author gives account of his choices in editing his Virgilian text. Engaging in a debate with his predecessors and critics, he guides the reader in a journey in the history of transmission and interpretation of Georgics and Aeneid, and shows how lively textual criticism can be.

This is an original collection of exemplary emendations made by ancient and modern scholars. Single examples are analysed in order to extract a method of emendation. The author reviews some attractive interventions which offer a model of textual criticism: a kind of ideal museum of critical intelligence applied to corruptions or cryptocorruptions which have damaged some Greek and Latin literary texts. All Greek and Latin passages included are literally translated and commented step by step. Advanced students and scholars are offered an orderly sequence of 'cruces' healed by great philologists so that a teaching route is granted.

"The Satyricon of Petronius", a comic novel written in the first century AD, is famous primarily for its amazing banquet tale, "Trimalchio's Feast." In this discussion of Petronius' masterful use of parody, the author offers an interpretation of the "Satyricon" as a whole.