Hesiod's Verbal Craft

Studies in Hesiod's Conception of Language and Its Ancient Reception
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-880771-1
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 384 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 703 g

This novel, ground-breaking study aims to define Hesiod's place in early Greek intellectual history by exploring his conception of language and the ways in which it represents reality. Divided into three parts, it addresses a network of issues related to etymology, word-play, and semantics, and examines how these contribute to the development of the argument and the concepts of knowledge and authority in the Theogony and the Works and Days.

Part I demonstrates how much we can learn about the poet's craft and his relation to the poetic tradition if we read his etymologies carefully, while Part II takes the discussion of the 'correctness of language' further - this correctness does not amount to a naïvely assumed one-to-one correspondence between signifier and signified. Correct names and correct language are 'true' because they reveal something particular about the concept or entity named, as numerous examples show; more
importantly, however, correct language is imitative of reality, in that language becomes more opaque, ambiguous, and indeterminate as we delve deeper into the exploration of the condicio humana and the ambiguities and contradictions that characterize it in the Works and Days. Part III addresses three moments
of Hesiodic reception, with individual chapters comparing Hesiod's implicit theory of language and cognition with the more explicit statements found in early mythographers and genealogists, demonstrating the importance of Hesiod's poetry for Plato's etymological project in the Cratylus, and discussing the ways in which some ancient philologists treat Hesiod as one of their own. What emerges is a new and invaluable perspective on a hitherto under-explored chapter in early Greek
linguistic thought which ascertains more clearly Hesiod's place in Greek intellectual history as a serious thinker who introduced some of the questions that occupied early Greek philosophy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vergados, Athanassios

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie

Über Autor(innen)

Athanassios Vergados received his PhD at the University of Virginia and is currently Reader in Greek at Newcastle University. He has held teaching and research posts at Franklin & Marshall College, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the University of Heidelberg, where he also held a fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is the author of a commentary on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (De Gruyter, 2013) as well as numerous articles on Greek
poetry and other topics.