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The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece

Margalit Finkelberg author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:16th Apr '98

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The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece cover

The purpose of this study is to find out how and why the `poetics of fiction' arose, its sources, and the materials from which it was created. A series of cultural choices made in archaic and classical Greece produced a clash between the traditional `poetics of truth', which derived poetry from divine inspiration and in the last analysis did not construe the poem as a work of art at all, and the new `poetics of fiction', which derived poetry from art. The eventual succession of the latter, culminating with the Poetics of Aristotle, amounted to an aesthetic revolution because, as a result of it, literary fiction, which since then has become a necessary framework for both the theory and practice of literature in Western tradition, was for the first time separated from non-fiction and given a status of its own.

an important and often engaging study * Religious Studies Review *
The book's strength is that it does approach weighty theoretical questions in a readable and organized way * The Classical Outlook *
Scholars of philosophy of literature will be most attracted to this volume's sustained and disciplined argument * The Classical Outlook *
This is a thought-provoking book, much of which involves a close reconstruction of Homeric 'poetics' and its relatinship to a larger Homeric model of psychological experience. * P. J. Rhodes, Greece & Rome *
An important and often engaging study. Of interest primarily to professional Homerists and specialists in the history of literary aesthetics. * S.Douglas Olsen, Religious Studies Review Vol.25 No.4 *

ISBN: 9780198150954

Dimensions: 225mm x 144mm x 19mm

Weight: 431g

234 pages