Aesopic conversations
Subtitle: popular tradition, cultural dialogue, and the invention of Greek prose
By: Leslie Kurke.
Series: Martin classical lectures
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Princeton
Language: eng
Number of pages: 504
ISBN-13: 9780691144573; 9780691144580
Subjects: Aesop -- Influence; Aesop's fables; Greek prose literature -- History and criticism; Fables, Greek -- History and criticism; Popular culture -- Greece -- History -- To 146 B.C; Popular culture and literature -- Greece -- History -- To 146 B.C; Literary form -- History -- To 1500; Literature and society -- Greece -- History -- To 146 B.C
Description: 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. This book explores the anonymous Life of Aesop. 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. --from publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: an elusive quarry: In search of ancient Greek popular culture; Explaining the joke: a roadmap for classicists; Synopsis of method and structure of argument; title: The Aesopic challenge to Delphic authority: Ideological tensions at Delphi; the Aesopic critique; Neoptolemus and Aesop: sacrifice, hero cult, and competitive scapegoating; title: Sophia before/beyond philosophy: the tradition of Sophia; Sophists and (as) sages; Aristotle and the transformation of Sophia; title: Aesop as sage: political counsel and discursive practice; Aesop among the sages; Political animals: fable and the scene of advising; title: Reading the life: the progress of a sage and the anthropology of Sophia: an Aesopic anthropology of wisdom; Aesop and Ahiqar; Delphic theoria and the death of a sage; the bricoleur as culture hero, or the art of extorting self-incrimination; title: The Aesopic parody of high wisdom: demystifying Sophia: Hesiod, Theognis, and the seven sages; Aesopic parody in the visual tradition; title: Aesop at the invention of philosophy: the problematic sociopolitics of mimetic prose; the generic affiliations of Sokratikoi logoi; title: The battle over prose: fable in sophistic education and Xenophon's Memorabilia: Sophistic fables; traditional fable narration in Xenophon's Memorabilia; title: Sophistic fable in Plato: parody, appropriation, and transcendence: Plato's Protagoras: debunking Sophistic fable; Plato's symposium: ringing the changes on fable; title: Aesop in Plato's Sokratikoi logoi: analogy, elenchos, and disavowal: Sophia into philosophy: Socrates between the sages and Aesop; the Aesopic bricoleur and the "old Socratic tool-box"; sympotic wisdom, comedy, and Aesopic competition in Hippias major; title: Historie and logopoiia: two sides of Herodotean prose: history before prose, prose before history; Aesop ho logopoios; Plutarch reading Herodotus: Aesop, ruptures of decorum, and the non-Greek; title: Herodotus and Aesop: Cyrus tells a fable; Greece and (as) fable, or resignifying the hierarchy of genre; fable as history; the Aesopic contract of the histories: Herodotus teaches his readers.