Federico Favi – författare

This volume is the first of four devoted to Atticism, a form of linguistic purism that sought to preserve the rules of the 5th-century Attic dialect against the evolution of Postclassical Greek. The series elucidates the origins and development of Atticist thought, as well as its impact, transmission, and legacy from the Byzantine Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Although Atticism flourished in the Imperial age, its roots are steeped in the previous centuries. This volume investigates the broad historical, cultural, and linguistic factors leading to the emergence of Attic as a prestige variety among the classical Greek dialects, the way Attic exclusivity was construed in Athenian literary sources, and how Hellenistic scholarship contributed to monumentalising Attic supremacy. Atticism can be regarded as the first example of an intellectual movement seeking to promote an extinct variety to the status of linguistic standard, reflecting an ideological and nostalgic view of identity. This volume traces the roots of this linguistic phenomenon back to factors at work in the construction of Hellenicity in the archaic and classical periods.

The contributions included in this volume deal with the indirect tradition of classical Greek texts in anthologies, lexica and scholia. The innovative approach taken consists in considering the indirect sources as texts worth studying in their own right, rather than as repositories of older, more important texts. The indirect tradition in scholarly literature is thus considered in terms of its broader historical and cultural implications.

Phrynichus’ Praeparatio sophistica ranks not last among the most importat works of ancient scholarly literature which we wish we could read in its original, full redaction. It was Phrynichus’ magnum opus, and the high status of this work was still acknowledged in Byzantine intellectual circles. This volume brings some new light to the Praeparatio sophistica and its history, focusing on three areas of interest: (1) its context of production and linguistic theorisation; (2) its stylistic theorisation and interpretative framework; (3) the direct and indirect transmission from antiquity, through Late Antiquity, and down to the Byzantine era. The volume will be of interest to Classicists working on the linguistic theories of Atticism and the literary practice of the Second Sophistic.