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Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose (Martin Classical Lectures), by Leslie Kurke
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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.
- Sales Rank: #2445577 in Books
- Published on: 2010-11-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.10" h x 1.20" w x 6.10" l, 1.65 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 504 pages
Review
Winner of the 2012 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit, American Philological Association
Shortlisted for the 2012 Runciman Award, Anglo-Hellenic League
"Kurke's learned and humane book aims to excavate the vibrant popular tradition assumed by Aesop's fables but now largely buried, and restore it to its place in cultural history. . . . Aesopic Conversations is a brilliant and original book, which will transform the way we read early Greek literature."--Tim Whitmarsh, London Review of Books
"There are large ideas in this book. Critical faculties will be honed by reading it."--Vivienne Gray, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"With her keen eye for symbolic expressions of ideological conflict, Kurke has thrust Aesop into the center of major political, philosophical and literary developments of the fifth and fourth centuries. Precisely because of its ambitions, many of the claims this book makes want weighing. But let it be said that if Kurke sometimes pushes the evidence, she never forces it, and she always gives space to alternative views in substantial footnotes."--Andrew Ford, International Journal of the Classical Tradition
"[Kurke] consistently succeeds in keeping the main lines of her argument clearly in view. Cumulatively her discussion is both rich and persuasive and often quite witty. The Aesop who emerges is altogether a much more complex, influential, and interesting figure than the homespun rustic narrator of 'Aesop's fables.'"--Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, New England Classical Journal
"[A] thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion, here and throughout the book: Kurke makes us look anew at familiar texts, and that is what literary criticism is for."--John Taylor, Anglo-Hellenic Review
"Kurke's . . . approach to the text(s) of the Life of Aesop [is] groundbreaking and sophisticated. While there have been a number of valuable studies of the Life of Aesop in recent decades, few have attempted to grapple in earnest with the specific challenges posed by its anonymity, textual multiplicity, and popular character."--Jeremy B. Lefkowitz, Phoenix
"Kurke's is a very distinctive voice. Her scholarship is always trenchant, thoughtful, and articulate. Her argument is clear, even when intricate and extended, and it has no Aesopic aggressions or sleights of hand. . . . There is much to admire and enjoy here."--Simon Goldhill, Classical World
"Aesopic Conversations is a brilliant book overall, rich in specialized information, and drawing on accurate data and references."--Filomena Vasconcelos, European Legacy
From the Back Cover
"Leslie Kurke is one of the sharpest and most original scholars of ancient Greek literary culture writing today. Informed, intellectually precise, and always engaged, her work has long been a pleasure and an education. Here she brings all of her considerable theoretical experience to the life and work of that least refined of ancient authors: Aesop. A hick, a foreigner, a slave, Aesop speaks with no kind of authority and yet by all accounts he is wise. Kurke takes this central conundrum as the starting point for a wide-ranging exploration of what it means in ancient Greek culture to be highbrow or lowbrow, gold or dross. Along the way there are some surprising diversions, numerous clever insights, and quite a lot of sophisticated and not so sophisticated fun."--James Davidson, University of Warwick
Aesopic Conversations is a masterpiece. Breathtakingly original, the book illuminates the dynamics of the Aesopic tradition and the intellectual history of Greece. It succeeds in showing that the seemingly marginal figure of Aesop, a fable-telling alleged criminal and itinerant slave, had a central role in the invention of a fundamental medium for all of Western history--serious nonfictional prose."--Richard P. Martin, Stanford University
"This brilliant and exciting book revises major parts of ancient Greek cultural and literary history by revealing the important influence of the Aesopic tradition. Kurke tackles big issues and treats topics with thoroughness and nuance."--William Hansen, professor emeritus, Indiana University
About the Author
Leslie Kurke is professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include "Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold" (Princeton).
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A magnificent work of scholarship
By Romulus
This is a magnificent work of historical and literary exploration into the largely unexplored traditions adhering to Aesop and their influence on the earliest forays into prose by the ancient Greeks.
Was Aesop a real person, or only a figure of legend? On this question, Kurke is "agnostic." Her primary interest is in the so-called Life of Aesop, an anonymously authored biography of the slave who became a sage; this peculiar book dates from around the 1st or 2nd century CE, but may convey traditional stories about Aesop that go much further back, predating Plato. You should probably read the Life of Aesop before diving into Kurke's theories, or read it along with this book.
This is by far the most extensive analysis of the Life of Aesop yet published, so for this reader (an amateur Aesopist) it's pure catnip. Certain aspects of the Life have long puzzled me; what is the exact nature of Aesop's relationship with his master, and why does his visit to Delphi turn out so badly? Kurke's examination of these issues is the most extensive I've read and her explanations are both convincing and exciting. She's not afraid to advance some bold, original ideas, or to make a few fanciful conjectures, but her risk-taking pays off. Kurke's suggestion that Aesop "was a popular contender for inclusion" in the list of the Seven Sages (p. 135) is a provocative idea I have not encountered anywhere else, and her linkage of the "stolen" vessel planted on Aesop by the Delphians with the phiale of the Seven Sages (p. 237) is downright brilliant.
The second part of the book looks at the writings of Plato, then Herodotus; in the works of both authors, Kurke sees the invisible influence of Aesop. Why invisible? Kurke asserts that these authors not only used Aesopic methods of storytelling, but also deliberately concealed that usage--and she tells you why they did so. This is a bit like using infrared reflectography on a medieval manuscript to read the palimpsest beneath; here, Kurke's "technology" is her wide-ranging knowledge of the literature and of the fiendish complexities of the original Greek. In this rarefied arena, an amateur like myself simply has to follow along, and look forward to assessments by Kurke's peers.
Kurke's arguments are meticulously constructed. Her prose is dense and her vocabulary sometimes highly esoteric, but there is an elegance to her writing that makes reading this book a pleasure. I looked forward to immersing myself in Aesopic Conversations each time I picked it up, and I am sad to have finished it (though I know I will be coming back to reread various passages over and over again for years to come).
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Creative and insightful
By DKO
I read this book with a special interest in Plato, so I wanted to know more about Greek prose traditions in popular forms, as well as about wisdom traditions. Kurke is a wonderful scholar --her book on praise poetry is terrific, The Traffic in Praise --and this book will be a classic for classicists.
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