BMCR 2009.01.33, Tim Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature

Tim Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature.  Cambridge:  Polity Press,
2004.  Pp. 284.  ISBN 0-74 56-2792-7.  $24.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Yun Lee Too, New York ([email protected])
Word count:  1349 words
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To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2009/2009-01-33.html
To comment on this review, see
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Tim Whitmarsh's Ancient Greek Literature has been published by Polity
Press in a series entitled 'Cultural History of Literature'. Polity for
the most part chooses to do textbooks, and this book is aimed at
university undergraduates and, appropriately, all Greek passages are
translated for accessibility. (But I want to add that the book I am
reviewing is very suited for Greeked readers too.) The series 'Cultural
History of Literature' lists Whitmarsh with such texts as Hallamore
Caesar and Caesar's Modern Italian Literature, Sandra Clark's
Renaissance Drama, Diane Watt's Medieval Women's Writing, Thomas
Cartelli and Katharine Rowe's New Wave Shakespeare on Screen, Tim
Armstrong's Modernism and Scott Warren's Early Modern Literature.  Also
included in this series are works on science fiction, romance and
detective fiction. We are told this is a 'cutting-edge list in literary
studies and cultural theory' by British and North American scholars. As
Ancient Greek Literature is the only work on classics, and certainly on
Greek literature, in the series and in the Polity list, it strongly
signifies a break from the mainstream or run-of-the-mill.

I suggest that the book is indeed cutting edge or on the forefront of
Greek literature studies and, as such, it is representative of the
classics tripos at Cambridge University (where incidentally TW and I
both studied and had research fellowships in the 1990s). In his preface
TW denies a chronological structure to his work in favour of themes and
topics that cluster around literary texts, albeit chapters 1 to 9
proceed rather chronologically around the various genres. This is what
I describe as the diachronic approach in the book. Chapters 10 to 13
read Greek literature synchronically, ordering the discussion around
very current topics that seek to demonstrate that the literature we are
calling 'Greek' was always in contest in a way that we might find very
relevant and engaging today.

The first two chapters, titled 'Concepts', set the book up to be a
history of Greek literature. Chapter 1, 'Greek Literature and Cultural
History', effectively locates the current book in the Polity series
'Cultural History of Literature'. It acknowledges that literature and
the leisure it implies are modern concepts; the ancients texts, were
far more functional as the world was a much harsher place that did not
tolerate so easily the luxury of literature. TW is aware that he is
reading Greek literature from a position that may be quite distinct
from the Greeks, and to indicate this he raises as questions: what is a
text? what is a canon? why do we periodize as do (say between 'ancient'
and 'Hellenistic')? what about the role of politics in constructions of
classics, particularly Greek? Overall, TW is concerned with the
different forms of labour that go into canon-formation. In chapter 2 TW
looks at what has become the problem of tradition. He considers Homer
established as the founder of the tradition in antiquity, one that is
other than uniform: Homer was allegorized; Homer was a text about
Greeks and barbarians; it was 'contaminated' in its textual tradition;
and it is a translated text. So we are to transpose the problem with
reading Homer to all of Greek literature.

The next section of the book is called 'Contexts' and it contains the
chronological reading of Greek literature.  Chapter 3, entitled
'Festival', looks at the the texts of Homer and Hesiod  and their
performance at public festivals. TW covers the major issues associated
with these texts, namely their composition, the representation and
struggle over power and the physical body. Chapter 4, the 'Symposium',
addresses the role of food and drink and the literature associated with
them, the symposiastic poem, in ancient Greek society. Friendship and
order in society are topics identified for discussion. Tragedy, which
is generally a major part of classics education, is the focus of the
next chapter, 'Theatre'. Here we turn specifically to Athens to think
about the representation of politics in the city, war with the 'other'
and the psychological dimension of tragedy, as present in Euripides'
Hippolytus. There is some attention given to comic writing and the
plays of Aristophanes at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 6, 'The Power of Speech', considers oratory and the
representation of the speechwriters and the city through oratory.  TW
looks at strategies of self-characterization that (probably) result in
one winning the argument. He turns particular attention to Lysias 1,
Against Eratosthenes, a speech familiar to those who have taken or
taught the Cambridge classics tripos and the rhetoric paper. TW has us
look at the rhetorical strategy of the speech and the defendant's
depiction of himself. Then he turns briefly to consider Socrates and
his use of the spoken word. The 'Archive', the monumentalizing impulse
in literature, is the theme of the following three chapters. 'Inventing
the Archive: Athens' reads prose in particular, examining Herodotus as
an author who presents causes, rather than a cause, for things and who
writes from a cultural relativist perspective and Thucydides as one who
aspires to write the truth as a possession for eternity. The following
chapter, 'Building the Archive:  Hellenistic Alexandria', treats the
library and the museum in the Greek outpost of Northern Africa. The
game has changed and here TW looks at the literature written by the
knowing elite for the knowing elite rather than the democratic mass.
Authors like Callimachus rewrite the past for the present through
aetiology, and authors seek the patronage of the Ptolemies while still
writing for the public. The chapter is very informative on an area that
may be less familiar to students of Greek literature.

Chapter 9, 'Reading from the Archive: Roman Greece', demonstrates TW at
his best, not suprisingly because this material is his area of
specialty (cf. Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and Roman Empire: The
Politics of Imitation Oxford, 2001).  The author introduces this
chapter with very informative background about the relationship of Rome
and Greece in the early empire and with an important discussion of
paideia as a means of distinction (cf. Bourdieu) in society. Education
legitimizes social stratification in this, and I would argue, any
world.  He then proceeds to treat the Second Sophistic, travel and the
ancient novel.

Part III of the book is entitled 'Conflicts'. It considers topics
across the range TW calls Greek literature rather than by genre and
provides the audience with some of the most insightful readings.
Chapter 10, titled 'Inventing the Greek: Cultural Identity', considers
what 'Greek' is, looking at texts from Homer, Hesiod and Herodotus
amongst others. 'Greek' is a contested term and TW recognizes this,
drawing notions of territory (pp. 169-72), festival (p. 173) and
paideia (p. 176) back into play. The following chapter, 'A Woman's
Place', recognizes that the book has been concerned for the most part
with male identities and now turns to considering Helen as a traveling
figure, Sappho as a reader of Homer, and women in tragedy and comedy.
TW notes a change in the representation of women beginning in the
Hellenistic period and in the novel with a greater emphasis in the
depiction of female subjectivity. Chapter 12 is 'Sexing the Text' and
considers desires of various forms, including the same-sex desire of
Sappho. Chapter 13,  'Status and Slavery', considers how social status
give certain individuals a voice in society and other individuals a
lack of speech up to the classical period. It also looks at slaves in
comedy and the slave in philosophical writing in the case of Epictetus.
This chapter ends this excellent volume, and it concludes with some
reflections on the 'Invention of Literature', revisiting the roles of
class and identity in this process.

TW includes end notes and a substantial bibliography in his book.

Ancient Greek Literature is an intelligent and stimulating book for
undergraduates and also for scholars, who sometimes need to see again
the forest for the trees. TW puts his finger nicely on the issues that
matter in reading Greek literature and succeeds well in presenting this
huge corpus of material succinctly in around two hundred pages. This is
a precise and excellent presentation that will enrich any
undergraduate's course of study in Greek writing.