Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose

Title

en_US Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose

en_US Martin Classical Lectures

Description

en_US First printing

en_US Leslie Kurke

Creator

en_US Kurke, Leslie

Date

2016-01-25T20:15:24Z

en_US 2011-07

en_US 2011

Date Available

2016-01-25T20:15:24Z

Date Issued

en_US 2011

Abstract

en_US This book is both daunting and fascinating. I look forward to it. It covers a great deal of territory and thus seems worthy of a series like the Martin Classical Lectures. For now, I have to be contented here to quote the back cover's description of Kurke's work. Examining the figure of Aesop and the traditions surrounding him, Aesopic Conversations offers a portrait of what Greek popular culture might have looked like in the ancient world. What has survived from the literary record of antiquity is almost entirely the product of an elite of birth, wealth, and education, limiting our access to a fuller range of voices from the ancient past. This book, however, explores the anonymous Life of Aesop and offers a different set of perspectives. Leslie Kurke argues that the traditions surrounding this strange text, when read with and against the works of Greek high culture, allow us to reconstruct an ongoing conversation of great and little traditions spanning centuries. Evidence going back to the fifth century BCE suggests that Aesop participated in the practices of nonphilosophical wisdom (sophia) while challenging it from below, and Kurke traces Aesop's double relation to this wisdom tradition. She also looks at the hidden influence of Aesop in early Greek mimetic or narrative prose writings, focusing particularly on the Socratic dialogues of Plato and the Histories of Herodotus. Challenging conventional accounts of the invention of Greek prose and recognizing the problematic sociopolitics of humble prose fable, Kurke provides a new approach to the beginnings of prose narrative and what would ultimately become the novel. Delving into Aesop, his adventures, and his crafting of fables, Aesopic Conversations shows how this low, noncanonical figure was--unexpectedly--central to the construction of ancient Greek literature.

Identifier

en_US 9780691144580 (pbk. : alk. paper)

en_US 8121 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/83365

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US Princeton University Press

en_US Princeton, NJ

Subject

en_US PA25.M3 New ser. v. 10

en_US Secondary

Type

en_US Book, Whole