Alison Keith, PhD
Alison Keith is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Toronto. She received a BA in Honors Classics from the University of Alberta and an MA and PhD in Classical Studies from the University of Michigan. Keith is the author of several books, including A Latin Epic Reader: Selections from Ten Epics (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2012), The Play of Fictions: Studies in Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 2 (University of Michigan Press, 1992), Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and coeditor (with Stephen Rupp) of Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007). She has written extensively on the intersection of gender and genre in Latin literature.
Books by Alison Keith, PhD
A Latin Epic Reader: Selections from Ten Epics
- 6862
- 978-0-86516-686-8
Epic crowned the classical hierarchy of genres, in large part because of the prestige of its subject matter—the establishment and maintenance of divine and human order. In ancient Rome, epic’s significance begins with Ennius, who adaptated Greek dactylic hexameter into Latin, securing the genre’s primacy as a narrative vehicle for celebrating Roman achievements. From these beginnings Latin hexameter was refined in the poetry of Lucretius and Catullus; the form flourished in the hands of Vergil and his successors.
