Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography: Futures Past from Herodotus to Augustine

ISBN-13: 9781107040281 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 436 str.

Jonas Grethlein

Opis

The past is narrated in retrospect. Historians can either capitalize on the benefit of hindsight and give their narratives a strongly teleological design or they may try to render the past as it was experienced by historical agents and contemporaries. This book explores the fundamental tension between experience and teleology in major works of Greek and Roman historiography, biography and autobiography. The combination of theoretical reflections with close readings yields a new, often surprising assessment of the history of ancient historiography as well as a deeper understanding of such authors as Thucydides, Tacitus and Augustine. While much recent work has focused on how ancient historians use emplotment to generate historical meaning, Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography offers a new approach to narrative form as a mode of coming to grips with time.

Recenzje

'… this new book by Grethlein is an investigation into literary memory in Antiquity … Its strength lies in Grethlein's ability to combine theoretical reflections with close readings and to see the complex intertwining of narrative form, purpose and historical circumstance.' Maria Osmers, The Classical Review

Spis treści

Introduction: futures past: historiography between experience and teleology; Part I. Experience: Making the Past Present: 1. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War; 2. Xenophon, Anabasis; 3. Plutarch, Alexander; 4. Tacitus, Annals; Part II. Teleology: The Power of Retrospect: 5. Herodotus, Histories; 6. Polybius, Histories; 7. Sallust, Bellum Catilinae; Part III. Beyond Experience and Teleology: 8. Augustine, Confessions; Epilogue: experience in modern historiography.