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BestsellerE-book
Author Roby, Courtney, 1978- author.

Title Technical ekphrasis in Greek and Roman science and literature : the written machine between Alexandria and Rome / Courtney Roby.

Publication Info. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, [2016]

Item Status

Description 1 online resource
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Contents Introduction: the written machine -- Genres: texts and artifacts -- Cultural contexts -- Ekphrastic complex -- Diagram and artifact -- Description and instruction -- Knowledge and artifact -- Conclusion: the limits of description.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary Ekphrasis is familiar as a rhetorical tool for inducing enargeia, the vivid sense that a reader or listener is actually in the presence of the objects described. This book focuses on the ekphrastic techniques used in ancient Greek and Roman literature to describe technological artifacts. Since the literary discourse on technology extended beyond technical texts, this book explores 'technical ekphrasis' in a wide range of genres, including history, poetry, and philosophy as well as mechanical, scientific, and mathematical works. Technical authors like Philo of Byzantium, Vitruvius, Hero of Alexandria, and Claudius Ptolemy are put into dialogue with close contemporaries in other genres, like Diodorus Siculus, Cicero, Ovid, and Aelius Theon. The treatment of 'technical ekphrasis' here covers the techniques of description, the interaction of verbal and visual elements, the role of instructions, and the balance between describing the artifact's material qualities and the other bodies of knowledge it evokes.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Ekphrasis.
Ekphrasis.
Rhetoric, Ancient.
Rhetoric, Ancient.
Literature and science -- Greece.
Literature and science.
Greece.
Literature and science -- Rome.
Science -- Greece -- History -- To 1500.
Science.
History.
Chronological Term To 1500
Subject Science -- Rome -- History -- To 1500.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Electronic books.
History.
Other Form: Print version: Roby, Courtney, 1978- Technical ekphrasis in Greek and Roman science and literature 9781107077300 (DLC) 2015041128 (OCoLC)927166087
ISBN 9781316533642 (electronic book)
1316533646 (electronic book)
9781139924849 (electronic book)
1139924842 (electronic book)
9781316532683
1316532682
9781107077300
1107077303
Standard No. 40025902271