A01=Leslie Kurke
Aesop
Aesop's Fables
Allusion
Anacharsis
Analogy
Ancient Greek comedy
Anecdote
Archilochus
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Author_Leslie Kurke
Category=DSBB
Category=NHC
Category=NHTB
Criticism
Croesus
Decorum
Diction
Diodorus Siculus
Diogenes of Sinope
Encomium
Epigram
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Explanation
Fiction
Genre
Gorgias
Gregory Nagy
Hellenistic period
Herodotus
Hesiod
Hippias
Homer
Isocrates
Literature
Logos
Margites
Metaphor
Muse
Myth
Narration
Narrative
Of Education
Old Comedy
Oral tradition
Parody
Phaedo
Phaedrus (dialogue)
Pharmakos
Philosopher
Philosophy
Philostratus
Pindar
Plutarch
Poetry
Prodicus
Prose
Protagoras
Proverb
Rhetoric
Sage (philosophy)
Second Sophistic
Socratic
Socratic dialogue
Sophist
Stesichorus
Stobaeus
Suggestion
Symposium (Plato)
The Philosopher
Thucydides
Treatise
Wisdom tradition
Writer
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691144580
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 14 Nov 2010
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Leslie Kurke is professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include "Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold" (Princeton).
