E. T. E. Barker, Entering the Agon: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy

Elton T. E. Barker, Entering the Agon: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy,  Oxford/New York:  Oxford University Press, 2009.  Pp. xiii, 433.  

• ISBN 9780199542710.  
• $140.00.  
  

Recension par  Colin J. Campbell (York University, Toronto) dans Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.01.38.

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Présentation de l'éditeur:

This book investigates one of the most characteristic and prominentfeatures of ancient Greek literature - the scene of debate or agon, inwhich with varying degrees of formality characters square up to eachother and engage in a contest of words. Drawing on six case studies ofdifferent kinds of narrative - epic, historiography and tragedy - andauthors as diverse as Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Sophocles andEuripides, this wide-ranging study analyses each example of debate inits context according to a set of interrelated questions: who debates,when, why, and with what consequences? Based on the changingrepresentations of debate across and within different genres, it showsthe importance of debate to these key canonical genres and, in turn,the role of literature in the construction of a citizen body throughthe exploration, reproduction and management of dissent from authority.

Elton T. E. Barker is Lecturer in Classics, Christ Church, University of Oxford. 

Table des matières:

Prologue Act I. Epic: Founding Dissent 1. Challenging authority in the assemblies of the Iliad 2. Sidelining debate in the Odyssey Act II. Historiography: Writing in Dissent 3. Herodotus' Odyssean enquiry 4. Thucydides writes debate Act III. Tragedy; Institutional Dissent 5. Speaking back in Sophocles' Ajax 6. Beyond the agon in Euripides' Hecuba Epilogue