The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece

Dougherty, Carol

ISBN 10: 0195083997 / ISBN 13: 9780195083996

Published by Oxford University Press, 1997

About this Item

First edition Book in fine condition Wrapper in very good condition. Only fault 1mm closed tear to tip of top rear left hand corner.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1591194647306

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195083997
• ISBN 13: 9780195083996
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Tales of archaic Greek city foundations continue to be told and retold long after the colonies themselves were settled, and this book explores how the ancient Greeks constructed their memory of founding new cities overseas. Greek stories about colonizing Sicily or the Black Sea in the seventh century B.C.E. are no more transparent, no less culturally constructed than nineteenth-century British tales of empire in India or Africa; they are every bit as much about power, language, and cultural appropriation. This book brings anthropological and literary theory to bear on the narratives that later Greeks tell about founding colonies and the processes through which the colonized are assimilated into the familiar story-lines, metaphors, and rituals of the colonizers. The distinctiveness and the universality of the Greek colonial representations are explored through explicit comparison with later European narratives of new world settlement.

About the Author

Carol Dougherty is Assistant Professor of Greek and Latin at Wellesley College.