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as the unreformed Writers' Union of the USSR. (Islamic fatwas against blasphemous literature cannot escape the notice of any reader of newspapers.) |
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This brief and necessarily crude sketch of various critical systems should not overlook the contributions they have provided to the eclectic critic concerned with the interpretation of classical literature. Such concepts as systematic ambiguity, imagery and figuration, persona, textual subversion, polyphony and dialogic, focalization, the carnavalesque, closure the list could be multiplied are now taken for granted in our investigations32 and should be able to co-exist comfortably enough with older technical terms such as paradosis and stemmatics. |
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The Continuity of Ancient and Modern Criticism and Theory |
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The disjunction between the principles and practice of earlier critics in this last half-century, even in the late eighteenth century (if we take Hermann as the first advocate of the limiting view of classical philology), and the most up-to-date of critical theorists may not seem to the historian of criticism or classical scholarship as abrupt, or as radical, as might be supposed.33 The more intriguing question that presents itself is whether there is a greater discontinuity between the preoccupations, assumptions, and conclusions of ancient literary critics and those of their more modern avatars. |
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It is evident enough that some modern critical debates are no more than continuations of perennial enquiries. The concept of genre was adumbrated, and even regulated, by Aristotle; it remained a systematic concern of the Alexandrian scholar-poets; it was adapted for their own purposes by Quintilian and other educators; it was later exhaustively codified by J.C. Scaliger in the Renaissance; and it still prompts lively and sometimes liberating dialogue.34 Canon formation, a particularly Alexandrian interest, embraced also by Quintilian for his propaedeutic purposes, has taken on a new and dynamic dimension as its underlying presuppositions are challenged by feminists and multiculturalists.35 Allegorical interpretation goes back to |
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32 How far "difference," "trace," and "supplement" will prove useful is still a matter of debate. |
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33 For a forceful presentation of this point, see Selden (1990) 174, although I do not agree with the pessimism of his conclusions. Some guidance to the friendly reception of critical theory by classicists will be found in Rosenmeyer (1988), the volumes of Arethusa cited in the bibliography below and in the general bibliography. |
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34 For ancient classification theories, see Russell (1981) 148, where the contributions are discussed of Plato, Aristotle, Proclus, Cicero, Horace, Quintilian, Menander Rhetor, pseudo-Dionysius; see Pfeiffer (1968) 182 for the Alexandrian contributions to the debate. Most of the relevant texts are in Russell and Winterbottom (1972). Grube (1965) is still the best survey. |
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35 On genre and canon formation see the discussions by Fowler (1982) 37; 213. The same author (1989) has some interesting speculations on the future of genre theory. |
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