Prolepsis

Predicting, Anticipating, Foretelling from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Roberta Berardi, Sabrina Mancuso, Olivia Montepaone

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2025
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9783111590202
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Literature

This volume collects contributions on the theme of prolepsis in Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Renaissance. As the interest in this topic grows, our goal is to provide a first attempt at adopting an all-encompassing approach, which thematizes prolepsis as a pivotal hermeneutic tool to "read" into different times and contexts. While the first section maintains a more traditional literary approach to the topic, the second section hosts a reflection on the relationship between prolepsis and kingship within historiographical accounts. The chapters of the third section revolve around a religious interpretation of prolepsis, creating an overview of theological practices and narrations connected to foreshadowing through time. Section four hosts chapters that differ significantly in their individual fields but share the common understanding of a practical application of prolepsis in the ancient Greek world, with a specific technical focus. The three essays of the fifth and final section explore entirely different conceptualizations, delving into alternative notions of prolepsis, combining approaches and maintaining a more methodological focus.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Introduction: A universal idea stored in the mind. Preliminary remarks on prolepsis
• L’Eracle ex machina nel Filottete di Sofocle: moduli espressivi e narrativi della profezia
• Un oracolo funesto, un principe esposto, una nascita illegittima: Per una ricostruzione degli Aleadi di Sofocle
• Il console mandato dagli dèi Il valore dei presagi nell’epica storica ciceroniana
• Prolepsis in Ancient Narrative Theory and Practice. “Rome” in Virgil’s Aeneid
• Profezia e sovranità spartana: ripensare le dinastie regali spartane alla luce del rapporto con l’oracolo di Delfi
• The Mantic King: Macedonian kingship and divination
• Setting Up the Tyrant in Suetonius’ Life of Nero
• Sogni africani: Giustiniano e Procopio alla vigilia della Guerra Vandalica (533)
• The “prophet and supreme priest”. Tentative remarks on a Pindaric fragment (fr. 94a.5–6 Snell-Maehler)
• Tra oscurità e evidenza: la Guerra di Troia nella profezia sibillina
• Passato, presente, futuro, eternità. I tempi della profezia tra Origene e gli Antiocheni
• Sogni, apparizioni, visioni, profezie: alcuni esempi di prolepsis nell’agiografia latina medievale
• Who Constitutes Pronoia in Athenian Murder Trials?
• A lost example of Demosthenic prolepsis in Rutilius’ rhetorical handbook
• Prognosi: la previsione come terapia nella medicina antica e nei papiri medici greci
• Stoic prolêpsis and Meno’s Paradox. Platonic Echoes in Stoic Concept Formation
• Genesis and Textual Stratification of Ancient Exegetical Texts: The Case of P.Oxy. 2506
• Profezie, visioni e molteplicità testuale nella letteratura copta: l’encomio “Sui quarantanove martiri di Sceti”
• Predicting manuscript evidence: premodern readings of the Apocolocyntosis
• Names and Places
• Passages
• Material sources