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Author:

Knox, Bernard MacGregor Walker.

Title:

The oldest dead white European males and other reflections on the classics / Bernard Knox.

Publisher:

W.W. Norton,

Copyright Date:

1994 c1993

Description:

144 pages ; 21 cm

Subject:

Greek literature--Theory, etc.--Theory, etc.
Civilization, Western--Greek influences.
Literature, Modern--Greek influences.
Greece--Civilization.
Littérature grecque--Théorie, etc.--Théorie, etc.
Grèce--Civilisation.
Civilization.
Civilization, Western--Greek influences.
Literature, Modern--Greek influences.
Greece.
Greek literature--Theory, etc.--Theory, etc.
Literature, Modern--Greek influences.
Civilization, Western--Greek influences.
Greece--Civilization.
History.--History.
Greece.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 131-136)-index.

Contents:

The oldest dead white European males -- The walls of Thebes -- The continuity of Greek culture.

Summary:

Long-time scholar and classicist Knox (coeditor, The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces) offers three essays in defense of the ancient Greeks against their current and many maligners in the camps of the new academia. '[The] revisionist case lacks cogency, '' declares Knox, arguing simply that the role of the ancients 'in the history of the West has always been innovative, sometimes indeed subversive, even revolutionary.'' As for the great fight over the 'canon, '' Knox refuses to be ruffled or alarmed, merely pointing out--perhaps optimistically--that if the classics are exchanged for other books, 'the new material will have to compete with the old, and if it is not up to the same high level it will sooner or later be rejected with disdain by the students themselves.'' Whether Knox sufficiently buttresses his arguments here to win the day in some imaginary and strenuously heated debate may not matter very much; his voice offers the high pleasures of enormous learnedness, great common sense, and simple clarity as he speaks (the essays all had their origins as talks) about the original meaning of the liberal arts, about the psychology and intellectual attitudes of the ancients--not avoiding their blemished views regarding women and slavery--and about the genuine contributions of the sophists, their best and deserved reputations besmirched for all of history by that zealous early promoter of political correctness, Plato.
Should the ancient Greeks - 'the oldest dead white European males' - and their legacy have any relevance to the way we live now? So much of what the ancients were and did may now appear positively racist and sexist in this era of multiculturalism. Yet for all their flaws, the Greeks gave us Homer Sappho, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and Thucydides, to name a few. They invented much of what we now take for granted: the idea of the humanities, philosophy, the theatre, competitive athletics, political theory, rhetoric and oratory, biology, zoology and atomic theory. In this book, Bernard Knox raises questions that are of fundamental importance for our age.

ISBN:

9780393312331
039331233X

OCLC:

(OCoLC)31203453

Locations:

UVAX975 -- Western Iowa Tech Library (Sioux City)