Ever since Neolithic times Greek lands lay open to cultural imports from western Asia: agriculture, metal-working, writing, religious institutions, artistic fashions, musical instruments, and much more. Over the last sixty years scholars have increasingly become aware of links connecting early Greek poetry with the literatures of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Canaan, and Israel. Martin West's new book far surpasses previous studies in comprehensiveness, demonstrating these links with massive and detailed documentation and showing that they are much more fundamental and pervasive than has hitherto been acknowledged. His survey embraces Hesiod, the Homeric epics, the lyric poets, and Aeschylus, and concludes with an illuminating discussion of possible avenues of transmission between the orient and Greece. He believes that an age has dawned in which Hellenists will no more be able to ignore the Near Eastern literature than Latinists can ignore Greek.
發表於2024-11-18
The East Face of Helicon 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
圖書標籤: 古希臘 Greek 文學史 文學 希臘 外語 兩河流域 Classics
強烈預感這是我死之前會列入遺囑的書
評分與ὀπώρα交換書單補記。關於所論議題,這本書在傳世文獻這一層次上(當然還會有此書尚未論及的齣土文物等層次)的cross-reference和documentation或已是十分詳備瞭。
評分與ὀπώρα交換書單補記。關於所論議題,這本書在傳世文獻這一層次上(當然還會有此書尚未論及的齣土文物等層次)的cross-reference和documentation或已是十分詳備瞭。
評分強烈預感這是我死之前會列入遺囑的書
評分In this book M.L.W. covers the Hesiodic and Homeric poems, lyric, down to Pindar and Bacchylides, and Aeschylus; but he's not concerned with oriental contributions to science and philosophy or other aspects of Greek culture. He holds a view that the influence of Egypt on Greek poetry and myth was vanishingly small in comparison with that of western Asia, i.e.Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Syrian, and biblical sources. (The comparative study of Greek and Near Eastern literature has not been much cultivated at Oxford in recent times, apart from M.L.W.'s occasional efforts. From the late eighteenth century Classical studies became more isolationist.) Since the second half of the nineteenth century when it became possible to read Akkadian cuneiform and then Sumerian and Hittite texts, and with the excavation of Ugarit since 1929, orientalists have found new points of contact with the Classical world. The discovery in the thirties and forties of the Hurro-Hittite Kumarbi mythology, with its undeniable anticipations of Hesiod's Theogony, finally forced Hellenists to accept the reality of Near Eastern influence on early Greek literature. <<Even from Oxford it is possible to discern the beginnings of a new and welcome trend for classicsts and ancient historians to study at least one oriental language. It would perhaps be too absolute to say that this is where the future of our studies lies; but nothing will contribute more to their progress than the bringing of new evidence to bear, and this is a particularly promising direction in which to look for it. It must become a firm part of our agenda for the twenty-first century. But there is much consciousness-raising still to be done. There are still too many classicists who thoughtlessly use 'the ancient world' or 'das Altertum' as a synonym for 'Graeco-Roman antiquity', as if other ancient civilizations did not exist.>> [There is a need for more orientalists, especially in the Assyriological field. Cuneiform studies have made enormous advances in the present century, but the ratio of manpower to material is such that they remain in a very developed state by comparison with our Graeco-Roman scholarship. All-round commentaries on literary texts, such as we are used to for classical authors, scarcely exist. Nor do word indexes and concordances.]--from Preface
The East Face of Helicon 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載