Abstract
The fourth lecture will focus on the relationship between Greek and local cultures. After an overview of the problem, we will focus on the particularly significant case of Greek literature in Egypt. While current opinion tends to regard the Greek literary culture of Late Antique Egypt as a product for the elite, completely detached from contemporary reality, I propose to look at this production as one of the components of Egyptian culture in dialogue with other cultures, especially Coptic culture. This assumption will be verified by a comparative examination of the rhetorical structures of Greek poetry produced in Thebaid and Alexandria, and of hagiographic and homiletic writings in Coptic.
