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In the following pages, I shall be looking at three different aspects of exemplification: the process of framing and contextualization of examples (particularly with regard to the example of linguistics and philology); the functioning of counter-examples and polarities (particularly with regard to Homeric models of female behaviour); the interplay of exemplification and narrativization (particularly with regard to tragic narrative). Each of these concerns broaches a major area of discussion among the writers collected under the aegis of post-structuralism, and I will trace exemplify some ways in which my work has been informed by this heterogeneous body of texts. (I follow here the exemplary sleight of hand of Kant who negotiates the difficulty of admitting influence and resisting mere copying as follows: 'Following [Nachfolge] which has reference to a precedent and not imitation [Nachahmung] is the proper expression for all influence which the products of an exemplary [exemplarischen] author may exert upon an other'.12) Before this, however, I wish very briefly to sketch some of the background as to why exemplification must be seen as a fundamental topic. |
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The discovery of classics in the Renaissance is a discovery of exemplarity.13 The ancient world provided a model and pinnacle of literature, of (heroic) behaviour, of philosophical reasoning: 'probably no descriptive term for literature and history was more universal in the Renaissance than "examples" or had a longer history'.14 Part of this long history is to be found in Greek and Roman rhetorical theories, which have their roots in Aristotle's treatment of paradeigmata as a standard tool of argumentation (Rhet. 2. 20ff). Part is also to be found in Greek and Roman culture's use of myth as paradigmatic stories:  , as Sophocles' chorus sings, 'taking your's as an example, your fate, Oedipus . . .'.15 Part is to be found in a tradition which includes Homer's treatment of Telemachus and Orestes but which finds its acme in Plutarch the exemplary life as model and philosophical paradigm. The use of exemplars is indeed an integral part of the Greek and Roman education system and is already being debated by Plato, not only in the Laws and the Republic but also in the Protagoras, where Protagoras is made to say that teachers offer 'panegyrics of the good men of old, so that the child may be inspired to imitate them and long to be like them' (326a). In the modern era, Marx famously said of the participants of the French Revolution that they 'performed the task of their time in Roman costume |
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12 Kant (1982) 1389. On Kant's punning between Nachahmung, 'following', and Nachmachung, 'imitation' in The Critique of Judgement see Derrida (1981b) 1011. |
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13 See Hampton (1990) for extensive bibliography and discussion. |
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14 Wallace (1974) 280. See also the works cited in n. 3. |
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15 S. O.T. 11935; the exemplarity of Oedipus is discussed by Vernant (1981) 6386; Segal (1981) 20748; Goldhill (1986) 199221. |
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