On television Joseph Campbell was the embodiment of the ideal academic: gentle, fatherly, informa... more On television Joseph Campbell was the embodiment of the ideal academic: gentle, fatherly, informative, reassuring, unworldly, spiritual, and articulate without being incomprehensible. He was knowledgeable about what we didn't have time (or inclination) to discover for ourselves, pleasantly remote, and (unlike most of non-television professors) entertaining. Campbell could tell a good story. And we could switch him off if we were bored or tired. It may also have helped that Campbell had died by the time that The Power of Myth was broadcast on PBS, so that we could regard him with respect without needing to engage ourselves with him directly. Many students seem to prefer that kind of class. But in the fall of 1989 it was suggested, first by Brendan Gill in the New York Review of Books, and then by other people who knew him, that Campbell was anti-Semitic and, just as surprisingly for someone who taught at Sarah Lawrence, condescending toward women, and maybe even anti-black into the bargain. These allegations seem to have been based primarily on unrecorded conversations and reminiscences. But in retrospect, further evidence of conduct unbecoming to a Good Professor could be drawn from the transcripts of what he said on television. Wasn't Campbell really endorsing selfish materialism when he recommended to his viewers that they each "follow their own bliss"? Wasn't that as good as saying that the unexamined yuppie life is indeed worth living, so long as they enjoy themselves in the process? Since I never met Joseph Campbell, I have
Pindar, perhaps more than any other ancient poet, seems to demand from his interpreters declarati... more Pindar, perhaps more than any other ancient poet, seems to demand from his interpreters declarations of their critical premises. In recent years scholars customarily have made initial acknowledgment to the work of E. R. Bundy, as psychoanalysts must to Freud, before they begin to offer their own modifications to and expansions of his fundamental work. Much contemporary scholarship has concentrated on the identification and classification in the odes of the elements whose function Bundy labelled and explained. But useful as this type of analysis has been for exorcising the demon of biographical interpretation, it has, like all orthodoxies, prevented perception of other equally important truths. It constitutes no radical heterodoxy to try to account for the fact that each individual ode, for all its dependence on common conventions of structure and of content, makes a different impression. Nor is it unreasonable to try to explain what makes Pindar's style and approach distinctive.In my own work I have argued, though perhaps not always convincingly, that language as well as structure contributes to an ode's coherence. Scholars trained in America are more willing to assume that repetition of phrase or theme within a poem has significance, and that metaphors can simultaneously bear more than one connotation. The issues at stake have most recently been delineated by Michael Silk, in his discussion of the effect of metaphor in archaic poetry: ‘By “patent”, I mean effects whose existence is not in doubt, though their character may be disputed; by “latent”, those whose effective significance is so tenuous or marginal that one resents the impression of solidity that even mentioning them produces. Such insensitivity is more common than it should be among American classicists, many of whom have also been influenced by the “New Criticism”…’ As illustration of the erroneous American approach Silk cites Cedric Whitman's description of the thematic relation of fires in the Iliad. Silk himself avoids the trap Whitman falls into by considering only ‘patent’ metaphors, and these consistently out of context, so that there is no necessity to comment on the existence or non-existence of thematic connections among them. But it is possible—at least logically—to frame the question differently, and to ask whether a metaphor cannot have patent and latent associations at the same time.
... I, p. 575). Another of Selene's mortal overs was the Eleu-sinian ruler and hierophan... more ... I, p. 575). Another of Selene's mortal overs was the Eleu-sinian ruler and hierophant Eumolpos, by her the father of Musaeus (Philo-chorus 328, FGrHist F208 = schol. Ar. Ran. ... Zeitlin 1986, p. 150. "Dawn is rapacious in her way." cf. also Stehle 1990, p. 94; Sourvinou-12. ...
THE BEGINNING OF HIS LIFE OF ALEXANDER, Plutarch draws a clear distinction between history and bi... more THE BEGINNING OF HIS LIFE OF ALEXANDER, Plutarch draws a clear distinction between history and biography: historians, he suggests, should make an exhaustive account of every action, particularly military contests; biographers must provide moral illustrations that reveal a man's character. Even though the purpose of biography differs from that of history, Plutarch implies that writers in either genre must select their information from the same source materials; it seems apparent also that both biographers and historians, in composing their narratives, frequently resort to a process that might euphemistically be called imaginative research, by which they reconstruct the past in terms of the present, elicit specific detail from general inference, and derive facts from fiction. Imaginative research was needed to put isolated evidence into meaningful settings and to furnish explanations for extraordinary references. What, for example, in Iliad 6, were the semata lygra ("baneful signs") that the hero, Bellerophon, brought in a folded tablet from the king of Argos in Greece to the king of Lycia in Asia Minor (168-69)? A recent modern discussion of this passage draws on archaeological discoveries to argue that the "signs" (semata) were written in the Linear В syllabary used by the Mycenaean Greeks; it has also been suggested that the story could reflect ancient lines of communication or trade routes. But the Hellenistic commentators on whose work our surviving scholia, or marginal notes, to Homer are based had no such resources or ambitions. They did not try to reconstruct the past by reference to early forms of communication. Instead they relied on "plausibility" (eikos): "It is impossible that the people who discovered every artistic skill didn't know the alphabet. But some commentators think that they were sacred zodiac signs, like the ones the Egyptians use to explain things." In relying on common sense, these Homeric scholars were following a precedent set by historians. Herodotus did not seriously set out to
In the early fifth century B.C., Xenophanes of Colophon observed that human beings tended to crea... more In the early fifth century B.C., Xenophanes of Colophon observed that human beings tended to create gods in their own image. He complained that Homer and Hesiod made the gods in their epics behave as disgracefully as human beings, stealing, committing adultery, deceiving one another. "Mortals think that gods are born, and that they wear human clothes and speak and look like humans"; "Ethiopians think their gods have flat noses and black skin and Thracians say they have green eyes and red hair"; "If oxen had hands, or horses or lions, and they could draw with their hands and finish works like men, the horses would draw images of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen and make them have the same bodies as they had themselves." The last three of these quotations are preserved by the Church father Clement of Alexandria, as an indictment of anthropomorphic paganism, and they are often cited as evidence that the Greeks themselves were aware of the limitations of their own religion. But primarily Xenophanes deserves to be quoted because his observation is, in a general way, true of all religions: humans create gods in their own image, depending upon their needs and what aspects of themselves they judge to be important at the time. Thus, Freud in his studies of the human mind describes the Judeo-Christian god as a wish fulfillment of the unconscious, a father figure, and religion itself as regression to a primitive stage of ego development. In its place he offered a new religion centered in the study of the human mind, with a new mythology that explained
... called Stesichorus because he first set up dance (Xop6v) for songs to the lyre (Ktlapotbi6(a)... more ... called Stesichorus because he first set up dance (Xop6v) for songs to the lyre (Ktlapotbi6(a)" (Suda S 1095 IV 433 Adler); there is no reason to assume that choros refers to "choruses of song." 0 That the term stesichoros refers to the dance is shown by a verse inscription on a red ...
On television Joseph Campbell was the embodiment of the ideal academic: gentle, fatherly, informa... more On television Joseph Campbell was the embodiment of the ideal academic: gentle, fatherly, informative, reassuring, unworldly, spiritual, and articulate without being incomprehensible. He was knowledgeable about what we didn't have time (or inclination) to discover for ourselves, pleasantly remote, and (unlike most of non-television professors) entertaining. Campbell could tell a good story. And we could switch him off if we were bored or tired. It may also have helped that Campbell had died by the time that The Power of Myth was broadcast on PBS, so that we could regard him with respect without needing to engage ourselves with him directly. Many students seem to prefer that kind of class. But in the fall of 1989 it was suggested, first by Brendan Gill in the New York Review of Books, and then by other people who knew him, that Campbell was anti-Semitic and, just as surprisingly for someone who taught at Sarah Lawrence, condescending toward women, and maybe even anti-black into the bargain. These allegations seem to have been based primarily on unrecorded conversations and reminiscences. But in retrospect, further evidence of conduct unbecoming to a Good Professor could be drawn from the transcripts of what he said on television. Wasn't Campbell really endorsing selfish materialism when he recommended to his viewers that they each "follow their own bliss"? Wasn't that as good as saying that the unexamined yuppie life is indeed worth living, so long as they enjoy themselves in the process? Since I never met Joseph Campbell, I have
Pindar, perhaps more than any other ancient poet, seems to demand from his interpreters declarati... more Pindar, perhaps more than any other ancient poet, seems to demand from his interpreters declarations of their critical premises. In recent years scholars customarily have made initial acknowledgment to the work of E. R. Bundy, as psychoanalysts must to Freud, before they begin to offer their own modifications to and expansions of his fundamental work. Much contemporary scholarship has concentrated on the identification and classification in the odes of the elements whose function Bundy labelled and explained. But useful as this type of analysis has been for exorcising the demon of biographical interpretation, it has, like all orthodoxies, prevented perception of other equally important truths. It constitutes no radical heterodoxy to try to account for the fact that each individual ode, for all its dependence on common conventions of structure and of content, makes a different impression. Nor is it unreasonable to try to explain what makes Pindar's style and approach distinctive.In my own work I have argued, though perhaps not always convincingly, that language as well as structure contributes to an ode's coherence. Scholars trained in America are more willing to assume that repetition of phrase or theme within a poem has significance, and that metaphors can simultaneously bear more than one connotation. The issues at stake have most recently been delineated by Michael Silk, in his discussion of the effect of metaphor in archaic poetry: ‘By “patent”, I mean effects whose existence is not in doubt, though their character may be disputed; by “latent”, those whose effective significance is so tenuous or marginal that one resents the impression of solidity that even mentioning them produces. Such insensitivity is more common than it should be among American classicists, many of whom have also been influenced by the “New Criticism”…’ As illustration of the erroneous American approach Silk cites Cedric Whitman's description of the thematic relation of fires in the Iliad. Silk himself avoids the trap Whitman falls into by considering only ‘patent’ metaphors, and these consistently out of context, so that there is no necessity to comment on the existence or non-existence of thematic connections among them. But it is possible—at least logically—to frame the question differently, and to ask whether a metaphor cannot have patent and latent associations at the same time.
... I, p. 575). Another of Selene's mortal overs was the Eleu-sinian ruler and hierophan... more ... I, p. 575). Another of Selene's mortal overs was the Eleu-sinian ruler and hierophant Eumolpos, by her the father of Musaeus (Philo-chorus 328, FGrHist F208 = schol. Ar. Ran. ... Zeitlin 1986, p. 150. "Dawn is rapacious in her way." cf. also Stehle 1990, p. 94; Sourvinou-12. ...
THE BEGINNING OF HIS LIFE OF ALEXANDER, Plutarch draws a clear distinction between history and bi... more THE BEGINNING OF HIS LIFE OF ALEXANDER, Plutarch draws a clear distinction between history and biography: historians, he suggests, should make an exhaustive account of every action, particularly military contests; biographers must provide moral illustrations that reveal a man's character. Even though the purpose of biography differs from that of history, Plutarch implies that writers in either genre must select their information from the same source materials; it seems apparent also that both biographers and historians, in composing their narratives, frequently resort to a process that might euphemistically be called imaginative research, by which they reconstruct the past in terms of the present, elicit specific detail from general inference, and derive facts from fiction. Imaginative research was needed to put isolated evidence into meaningful settings and to furnish explanations for extraordinary references. What, for example, in Iliad 6, were the semata lygra ("baneful signs") that the hero, Bellerophon, brought in a folded tablet from the king of Argos in Greece to the king of Lycia in Asia Minor (168-69)? A recent modern discussion of this passage draws on archaeological discoveries to argue that the "signs" (semata) were written in the Linear В syllabary used by the Mycenaean Greeks; it has also been suggested that the story could reflect ancient lines of communication or trade routes. But the Hellenistic commentators on whose work our surviving scholia, or marginal notes, to Homer are based had no such resources or ambitions. They did not try to reconstruct the past by reference to early forms of communication. Instead they relied on "plausibility" (eikos): "It is impossible that the people who discovered every artistic skill didn't know the alphabet. But some commentators think that they were sacred zodiac signs, like the ones the Egyptians use to explain things." In relying on common sense, these Homeric scholars were following a precedent set by historians. Herodotus did not seriously set out to
In the early fifth century B.C., Xenophanes of Colophon observed that human beings tended to crea... more In the early fifth century B.C., Xenophanes of Colophon observed that human beings tended to create gods in their own image. He complained that Homer and Hesiod made the gods in their epics behave as disgracefully as human beings, stealing, committing adultery, deceiving one another. "Mortals think that gods are born, and that they wear human clothes and speak and look like humans"; "Ethiopians think their gods have flat noses and black skin and Thracians say they have green eyes and red hair"; "If oxen had hands, or horses or lions, and they could draw with their hands and finish works like men, the horses would draw images of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen and make them have the same bodies as they had themselves." The last three of these quotations are preserved by the Church father Clement of Alexandria, as an indictment of anthropomorphic paganism, and they are often cited as evidence that the Greeks themselves were aware of the limitations of their own religion. But primarily Xenophanes deserves to be quoted because his observation is, in a general way, true of all religions: humans create gods in their own image, depending upon their needs and what aspects of themselves they judge to be important at the time. Thus, Freud in his studies of the human mind describes the Judeo-Christian god as a wish fulfillment of the unconscious, a father figure, and religion itself as regression to a primitive stage of ego development. In its place he offered a new religion centered in the study of the human mind, with a new mythology that explained
... called Stesichorus because he first set up dance (Xop6v) for songs to the lyre (Ktlapotbi6(a)... more ... called Stesichorus because he first set up dance (Xop6v) for songs to the lyre (Ktlapotbi6(a)" (Suda S 1095 IV 433 Adler); there is no reason to assume that choros refers to "choruses of song." 0 That the term stesichoros refers to the dance is shown by a verse inscription on a red ...
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