Thinking the Greeks A Volume in Honor of James M. Redfield

This volume, from an international and interdisciplinary cohort of scholars, offers independent-minded essays about central Greek texts and about the relation of social theory and comparative method to the study of archaic and classical Greek literature. It is in honour of James M. Redfield, whose innovative and theoretically-informed work has been a touchstone for the contributors; it includes an Introduction that discusses Redfield’s work, as well as a complete Bibliography of Redfield’s scholarship. The volume is divided into three parts: on Homer; Plato in conversation with epic, tragedy, and comedy; and finally reception and transmission. An exploration of the dialectical relationship between literary genre and social form animates many of the essays. Drawing on work in anthropology, linguistics, sociology, art history, and philosophy, this volume offers ground-breaking perspectives on the study of Greek literature. It will be an invaluable resource to students and researchers alike.

List of figures; List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Editors’ Introduction: Bruce M. King and Lillian Doherty; Part One: Homer; 1. Laura M. Slatkin "Counterfactuals and the Plot of the Iliad"; 2. Wendy Olmsted "Odysseus at the Boundaries of Pre-Culture"; 3. Sarah Nooter "The Wooden Horse: The Unmaking of the Odyssey"; 4. Froma Zeitlin "Constructing the Aesthetic Body in Homer and Beyond"; 5. Katherine Kretler "Tapping the Wellsprings of Action: Homeric Ring Composition in Aristotle’s Birth of Tragedy"; Part Two: Plato in Conversation with Epic, Tragedy, and Comedy; 6. Glenn Most "Homer, the First of the Tragedians? Remarks on Plato Republic 10"; 7. Kendall Sharp "Plato’s Hippias Minor as Literary Criticism"; 8. Stephanie Nelson "Between Being and Becoming: Comedy, Tragedy, and the Symposium"; 9. Bruce M. King "Contrafactual Education in Sophocles’ Philoktetes and Plato’s Lysis"; 10. Paul Ludwig "Vulgar Eros in the Phaedrus"; 11. James McGlew "Equality and Sortition in Plato’s Laws"; Part Three: Travel and Transmission; 12. Gregory Nagy "A Ritualized Re-thinking of What it Meant to be ‘European’ for Ancient Greeks of the Post-Heroic Age: Evidence from the Heroikos of Philostratus"; 13. Wendy Doniger "Menander, Terence, and the Rape of the Clever Wife"; 14. Philippe Borgeaud "Sarapis and the Emperor of China: Some Thoughts on Comparison"; 15. Claudia Zatta "The Desire to Live: Aristotle’s Animals in Hobbes’ Philosophy of Man"; 16. Ian Desai "The Alchemy of Influence: Socrates, Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Gandhi"; List of James M. Redfield publications; Index

Bruce M. King teaches Classical Studies at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU, USA; he is also a member of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, USA. Lillian Doherty is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA.