Routledge Resemblance and Reality in Greek Thought: Essays in Honor of Peter M. Smith (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies)

Resemblance and Reality in Greek Thought follows the construction of reality from Homer into the Hellenistic era and beyond. Not only in didactic poetry or philosophical works but in practically all genres from the time of Homer onwards, Greek literature has shown an awareness of the relationship between verbal art and the social, historical, or cultural reality that produces it, an awareness that this relationship is an approximate one at best and a distorting one at worst. This central theme of resemblance and its relationship to reality draws together essays on a range of Greek authors, and shows how they are unified or allied in posing similar questions to classical literature. Review  With sophistication and originality evident throughout, Resemblance and Reality in Greek Thought presents fourteen studies of a dichotomy pervasive in Greek literature and thought and refracted in Roman epic. The authors study, inter alia, the artistry of spaces constructed within the antimony, inconsistencies in the Greek literary and philosophical tradition, ambiguities within the Greek language itself, and philosophical challenges to the Theory of Forms. This is an altogether original and well-crafted book. - Professor Victor Bers, Yale University, USA About the Author Arum Park is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on Archaic and Classical Greek poetry, but she has published on a wide range of authors, including Hesiod, Pindar, Ovid, and Longus. Her current book project, supported by a 2012-13 fellowship from the Center for Hellenic Studies, treats the concepts of truth, gender, and genre in Pindar and Aeschylus.