The Poetics of Colonization From City to Text in Archaic Greece

by Dougherty, Carol

• ISBN13: 9780195083996
• ISBN10: 0195083997
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-10-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Tales of archaic Greek city foundations continue to be told and retold long after the colonies themselves were settled, and this book explores how the ancient Greeks constructed their memory of founding new cities overseas. Greek stories about colonizing Sicily or the Black Sea in the seventh century B.C.E. are no more transparent, no less culturally constructed than nineteenth-century British tales of empire in India or Africa; they are every bit as much about power, language, and cultural appropriation. This book brings anthropological and literary theory to bear on the narratives that later Greeks tell about founding colonies and the processes through which the colonized are assimilated into the familiar story-lines, metaphors, and rituals of the colonizers. The distinctiveness and the universality of the Greek colonial representations are explored through explicit comparison with later European narratives of new world settlement.

Author Biography

Carol Dougherty is Assistant Professor of Greek and Latin at Wellesley College.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Poetics of Colonization	p. 3
Narratives and Metaphors: Translating the City into Text
Laying the Foundations: Narrative and Cult	p. 15
Murderous Founders	p. 31
Impossible Sites	p. 45
The Lay of the Land	p. 61
Texts in Context: Staging the City
Hieron and Aetna	p. 83
Pythian 5: Colonial Founders and Athletic Victors	p. 103
Olympian 7 and Bacchylides Ode 11: Murder, Victory, and Colonization	p. 120
Pythian 9: Appropriating the Native	p. 136
Conclusion: Interpreting the Metaphors	p. 157
Appendix	p. 165
Bibliography	p. 189
Index of Passages	p. 201
Subject Index	p. 205
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