A Survey of Lyric Genres in Hellenistic Poetry: the Hymn. Transformation, Adaptation, Experimentation

The paper is the premise to S. Barbantani’s contribution "Lyric for the Rulers, Lyric for the people. The transformation of some lyric subgenres in Hellenistic poetry", in E. Sistakou (ed.), "Hellenistic Lyricism. Traditions and Transformations of a Literary Mode", Trends in Classics 9.2 (2017), 339-399. It analyses how some of the main lyric genres developed in archaic and classical Greek poetry underwent transformation in the Hellenistic period, following social, political and cultural changes. The paper is exploring specifically lyric poetry produced “for the gods” (hymns, esp. paeans, preserved on stone and on papyrus). Summary: I. Introduction. The Context. 1.1. Genre. 1.2. The Problem of musical notation. 1.3. Technitai and anonymous Poets. 1.4. Lyric education in Gymnasia. 1.5. Poetae docti. II. Lyric for the gods. 2.1. The Hymn and its subgenres. 2.2. Inscriptional paeans and other religious poetry. 2.3. Hymns on papyri and ostraka. 2.4. Hymns as literary poems: Callimachus, Philicus and the rest.