Scale, Space and Canon in Ancient Literary Culture
Cambridge University Press, 2/20/2020
EAN 9781108481472, ISBN10: 1108481477
Hardcover, 902 pages, 21.8 x 15.2 x 4.3 cm
Language: English
Greek culture matters because its unique pluralistic debate shaped modern discourses. This ground-breaking book explains this feature by retelling the history of ancient literary culture through the lenses of canon, space and scale. It proceeds from the invention of the performative 'author' in the archaic symposium through the 'polis of letters' enabled by Athenian democracy and into the Hellenistic era, where one's space mattered and culture became bifurcated between Athens and Alexandria. This duality was reconfigured into an eclectic variety consumed by Roman patrons and predicated on scale, with about a thousand authors active at any given moment. As patronage dried up in the third century CE, scale collapsed and literary culture was reduced to the teaching of a narrower field of authors, paving the way for the Middle Ages. The result is a new history of ancient culture which is sociological, quantitative, and all-encompassing, cutting through eras and genres.
Acknowledgments
General introduction
Part I. Canon
1. Canon
the evidence
2. Canon in practice
the polis of letters
Part II. Space
3. Space, the setting
the making of an Athens-against-Alexandria Mediterranean
4. Space in action
when worlds diverge
Part III. Scale
5. A quantitative model of ancient literary culture
6. Scale in action
stability and its end
Coda to the book
Bibliography
Index.