Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic

Focusing on the period known as the Second Sophistic (an era roughly co-extensive with the second century AD), this Handbook serves the need for a broad and accessible overview. The study of the Second Sophistic is a relative new-comer to the Anglophone field of classics and much of what characterizes it temporally and culturally remains a matter of legitimate contestation. The present Handbook offers a diversity of scholarly voices that attempt to define,as much as is possible in a single volume, the state of this rapidly developing field. Included are chapters that offer practical guidance on the wide range of valuable textual materials that survive, many of which are useful or even core to inquiries of particularly current interest (e.g. gender studies,cultural history of the body, sociology of literary culture, history of education and intellectualism, history of religion, political theory, history of medicine, cultural linguistics, intersection of the Classical traditions and early Christianity). The Handbook also contains essays devoted to the work of the most significant intellectuals of the period such as Plutarch, Dio Chrysostom, Lucian, Apuleius, the novelists, the Philostrati and Aelius Aristides. In addition to content andbibliographical guidance, however, this volume is designed to help to situate the textual remains within the period and its society, to describe and circumscribe not simply the literary matter but the literary culture and societal context. For that reason, the Handbook devotes considerable space at the frontto various contextual essays, and throughout tries to keep the contextual demands in mind. In its scope and in its pluralism of voices this Handbook thus represents a new approach to the Second Sophistic, one that attempts to integrate Greek literature of the Roman period into the wider world of early imperial Greek, Latin, Jewish, and Christian cultural production, and one that keeps a sharp focus on situating these texts within their socio-cultural context.

... this handbook covers an unusually wide range of topics that are relevant to Hellenic culture under Rome in the first three centuries AD. Those teaching courses on any aspect of this period will consult the volume with much benefit and might even consider putting selected chapters on the syllabus., The volume offers a central-ized resource for scholars of imperial literature and culture with chapters by many of the most respected scholars in the field. Moreover, it succeeds in illustrating that many aspects of the Second Sophistic are apparent and relevant across boundaries of time, space, ethnicity, and culture., One might almost call this valuable volume Forty Three Ways of Thinking about the So-called 'Second Sophistic'. All chapters evidence solid scholarship; some give substantial overviews of designated subject matter, others are more argumentative ... This is a truly valuable and complex volume that gives a detailed overview of the 'state of the question' regarding the Second Sophistic and its penumbra. It certainly expanded my understanding of the movement., This volume constitutes an impressive testimony to the breadth, depth, and vivacity of contemporary research in the field ... In sum, I warmly recommend the Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic to anyone looking for up-to-date information on a broad range of aspects of imperial literature and culture., This book constitutes a rich source of information and good judgment on a wide range of Greek and Latin literature, and for such a well-edited and well-printed volume it is relatively inexpensive. It can be recommended.

William A. Johnson is Professor in Classical Studies at Duke University and the author of Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto, 2004), Ancient Literacies (co-editor, OUP, 2009), and Readers and Reading Culture in the High Empire (OUP, 2010).Daniel S. Richter is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Southern California and the author of Cosmopolis (OUP, 2011).