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E-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
Published Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, [2016]

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Description 1 online resource
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
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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Ekphrasis.
Rhetoric, Ancient.
Literature and science -- Greece
Literature and science -- Rome
Science -- Greece -- History -- To 1500
Science -- Rome -- History -- To 1500
ekphrasis.
PHILOSOPHY -- History & Surveys -- Ancient & Classical.
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES -- Composition & Creative Writing.
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES -- Rhetoric.
REFERENCE -- Writing Skills.
Ekphrasis
Literature and science
Rhetoric, Ancient
Science
Greece
Rome (Empire)
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781316533642
1316533646
9781139924849
1139924842
9781316532683
1316532682