AUTHORSHIP AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN EARLY GREECE AND CHINA Patterns of Literary Circulation Fine with no dust jacket

Cambridge University Press, 2010

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Details

Year of publication

2010

Author

Beecroft, Alexander

Publishers

Cambridge University Press

Keyword

Greek History Classical Greek & Roman Greek Literature Far, Eastern Studies

Cover description

Fine with no dust jacket

Binding description

Hardcover ISBN 0521194318

Description

338 pages; In this book, Alexander Beecroft explores how the earliest poetry in Greece (Homeric epic and lyric) and China (the Canon of Songs) evolved from being local, oral, and anonymous to being textualized, interpreted, and circulated over increasingly wider areas. Beecroft re-examines representations of authorship as found in poetic biographies such as Lives of Homer and the Zuozhuan, and in the works of other philosophical and historical authors like Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Confucius, and Sima Qian. Many of these anecdotes and narratives have long been rejected as spurious or motivated by naпve biographical criticism. Beecroft argues that these texts effectively negotiated the tensions between local and pan-cultural audiences. The figure of the author thus served as a catalyst to a sense of shared cultural identity in both the Greek and Chinese worlds. It also facilitated the emergence of both cultures as the bases for cosmopolitan world orders.