Terence and Interpretation / edited by Sophia Papaioannou

Introduction -- Terence and Interpretation / Sophia Papaioannou -- I. Terence as interpreter -- 1. The Innovator’s Poetic Self-Presentation: Terence’s Prologues as Interpretative Texts of Programmatic Poetics / Sophia Papaioannou -- 2. Singing the Sermo Comicus with Terence / Jarrett Welsh -- 3. Tragic and Epic Interactions in Terentian Comedy / Evangelos Karakasis -- 4. Terence’s Literary Self-Consciousness and the Anxiety of Menander’s Influence / Sophia Papaioannou -- 5. Terence, the Corrective Reader and Innovator / Alison Sharrock -- 6. Terence’s Stock Characters and Plots: Stereotypes ‘Interpreted’ / Sophia Papaioannou -- II. Interpretations of Terence -- 7. Cicero, an Interpreter of Terence / Gesine Manuwald -- 8. Donatus on ‘Appropriate Style’ in the Plays of Terence / Robert Maltby -- 9. Performing Terence’s Characters: a Study of Donatus’ Interpretation / Chrysanthi Demetriou -- 10. Interpretations and Adaptations of Terence’s Andria, from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century / Peter Brown
.

This volume examines interpretation as the original process of critical reception vis-a-vis Terence’s experimental comedies. The book, which consists of two parts, looks at Terence as both an agent and a subject of interpretation. The First Part (‘Terence as Interpreter’) examines Terence as an interpreter of earlier literary traditions, both Greek and Roman. The Second Part (‘Interpretations of Terence’) identifies and explores different expressions of the critical reception of Terence’s output.

The papers in both sections illustrate the various expressions of originality and individual creative genius that the process of interpretation entails. The volume at hand is the first study to focus not only on the interpreter, but also on the continuity and evolution of the principles of interpretation. In this way, it directs the focus from Terence’s work to the meaning of Terence’s work in relation to his predecessors (the past literary tradition), his contemporaries (his literary antagonists, but also his audience), and posterity (his critical readers across the centuries).