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Who Needs Greek?

Who Needs Greek?

Who Needs Greek?

Contests in the Cultural History of Hellenism
Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge
April 2002
Paperback
9780521011761
$53.00
USD
Paperback
USD
Hardback

    Who Needs Greek? is an interdisciplinary study of arguments on what ancient Greece has meant to western culture from the ancient world to today. The battles between artists and literary critics, historians and journalists, politicians and scholars, are often violent, hilarious, and always passionate. This cutting-edge cultural history ranges from ancient Greece via the Renaissance to modern opera, and treats a central question of culture in a way which will intrigue academics as well as a more general audience.

    • Deals with an exciting and polemical theme which will engage a broad audience
    • Presents a significant amount of original scholarship in a lively style and manner
    • Contains wonderful stories, fascinating pictures and an extraordinary range of material

    Reviews & endorsements

    "A fine performance. Including a full bibliography and a good index, this volume will serve graduate students and researchers studying Greek, comparative literature, literary theory, and even (humanistic) psychology and anthropology." Choice

    "Always a masterful storyteller, Goldhill marhshals evidence with elan...[he] has brought contemporary cultural theory to bear on the Classics with singular tact and persuasiveness...these tales are told wonderously well, and Goldhill lives up to his promise not just to trace literary influence but to demonstrate cultural impact." New England Classical Journal

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    Product details

    April 2002
    Paperback
    9780521011761
    336 pages
    231 × 152 × 17 mm
    0.46kg
    20 b/w illus.
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • List of illustrations
    • List of abbreviations
    • Introduction: shaking the foundations
    • 1. Learning Greek is heresy! Resisting Erasmus
    • 2. Becoming Greek, with Lucian
    • 3. Blood from the shadows: Strauss' disgusting degenerate Elektra
    • 4. Who knows Greek?
    • 5. The value of Greek. Why save Plutarch?
    • Conclusion: rainbow bridges
    • Works cited
    • Index.
      Author
    • Simon Goldhill , University of Cambridge