Banishing the Poets
نویسنده
چکیده
The main argument of this monograph,* if I understand it rightly (something its rather cloudy writing makes me uncertain of), is that the body of works often (and traditionally) grouped together under the rubric ‘ancient literary criticism’ should be understood not as contributions to aesthetics or criticism of literature as these terms are commonly understood today but rather as political interventions. The aim was to distinguish texts that were acceptable from those which were not, acceptability being defined in terms of the good of the elite citizen body. Yun Lee Too starts her discussion with an ingenious allegorization of the myth of Typhon from Hesiod’s Theogony: Typhon with his myriad voices is figured as the dangerous text that requires censorship, Zeus as the critic who controls what may be said, by imposing exclusions and inclusions. In one respect The Idea of Ancient Literary Criticism, presented as revisionary and from a ‘left-wing’ position, is conservative in outcome, namely that discussion concentrates on the usual suspects, from Plato to St. Augustine; in that sense the book could be said to reinforce traditional canonical arrangements. Too’s defence of this emphasis is, reasonably enough, that these particular texts have been accorded especial authority within the Western tradition as a whole (12–13). This might suggest a reception-oriented approach, an examination of this group of writings through their interpretation in subsequent centuries. But in practice Too’s discussion continually wobbles between such a reading from the present and an approach that is much more redolent of the sort of historical positivism still dominant in classics. In her conclusion she writes that “My subtexts have been the idea of
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