Texts, Ideas, and the Classics Scholarship, Theory, and Classical Literature

by Harrison, S. J.

• ISBN13: 9780199247462
• ISBN10: 0199247463
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-11-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book aims to promote a simple idea: that, in the contemporary context of the study and interpretation of classical literature at universities, traditional classical scholarship and modern theoretical ideas need to work with each other in the common task of the interpretation of texts. Such dialogue and co-operation is not merely desirable; it is essential to ensure the survival and relevance of the study of classical literature in the twenty-first century. The topics selected were chosen by a panel of distinguished practitioners as traditional areas of classical literary studies where the importance of co-operation of theory and scholarship could be shown in different ways by scholars who ranged widely in their views: "literary language," "narrative," "genre," "historicism," and "reception and history of scholarship."

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	xi
General Introduction: Working Together	1	(18)
Stephen Harrison
LITERARY LANGUAGE	19	(44)
Introduction	21	(5)
Stephen Harrison
Pindar Meets Plato: Theory, Language, Value, and the Classics	26	(20)
Michael Silk
Metatext and its Functions in Greek Lyric Poetry	46	(17)
Jerzy Danielewicz
NARRATIVE	63	(72)
Introduction	65	(5)
Don Fowler
Picturing the Future: The Proleptic Ekphrasis from Homer to Vergil	70	(23)
Stephen Harrison
The Anachronical Structure of Herodotus' Histories	93	(24)
Irene de Jong
The Snares of the Odyssey: A Feminist and Narratological Reading	117	(18)
Lillian Doherty
GENRE	135	(54)
Introduction	137	(5)
Susanna Morton Braund
The Crossing	142	(22)
Alessandro Barchiesi
Seneca's Epistles Reclassified	164	(25)
Marcus Wilson
HISTORICISM	189	(54)
Introduction	191	(4)
Simon Swain
A False Dilemma: Thucydides' History and Historicism	195	(25)
John Moles
Polybius/Walbank	220	(23)
John Henderson
RECEPTION/HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP	243	(58)
Introduction	245	(7)
Michael Reeve
Giants on the Shoulders of Dwarfs? Considerations on the Value of Renaissance and Early Modern Scholarship for Today's Classicists	252	(13)
Ingrid A. R. De Smet
Purity in Danger: The Contextual Life of Savants	265	(20)
Christopher Stray
Latin Studies in Germany, 1993--1945: Institutional Conditions, Political Pressures, Scholarly Consequences	285	(16)
Peter Lebrecht Schmidt
Bibliography	301	(28)
Index	329