The Oxford Handbook to the Second Sophistic

Abstract

The study of the Second Sophistic is a relative newcomer to the Anglophone field of classics, and much of what characterizes it temporally and culturally remains a matter of legitimate contestation. This Handbook offers a diversity of scholarly voices that attempt to define the state of this 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 contains chapters 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 its content and bibliographical guidance, this volume helps to situate the textual remains within the period and its society, to describe and circumscribe the literary matter and the literary culture and societal context. Throughout it tries to keep the contextual demands in mind. In its scope and 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.