Tombs of the Ancient Poets

This book explores the ways in which the tombs of the ancient poets—real and imagined—are crucial sites for the reception of Greek and Latin poetry. The volume makes a distinctive contribution to the study of literary reception by focusing on the materiality of the body and the tomb, and the ways in which they mediate the relationship between classical poetry and its readers. From the tomb of the boy poet Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, which preserves his prize-winning poetry carved on the tombstone itself, to the modern votive offerings left at the so-called ‘Tomb of Virgil’, from the doomed tomb-hunting of long-lost poets’ graves to the ‘graveyard of the imagination’ constructed in Hellenistic poetry collections, the essays in this volume demonstrate how the tombs of the ancient poets shape and in turn are shaped by literary history.