Massimo Giuseppetti

The first part of the article foregrounds Walter Wimmel’s impact on Callimachean scholarship by focusing on the key concept of ‘short form’ (Kleinform). In Wimmel’s view this novel concept explains Callimachus’ success among Augustan poets; it is also critical for understanding how the literary experiments carried out by Alexandrian poets are a reaction to the crisis of poetic language already begun in the classical age. Among recent discussions of Wimmel’s impact on Hellenistic aesthetics, J.I. Porter’s critique of the ‘ideology of λεπτότης’ is both radical and thought-provoking...