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Literary Imagination, Ancient and Modern

Essays in Honor of David Grene

Perhaps best known for his widely acclaimed translations of the Greek tragedies and Herodotus’s History, as well as his edition of Hobbes’s Thucydides, David Grene has also had a major impact as a teacher and interpreter of texts both ancient and modern. In this book, distinguished colleagues and former students explore the imaginative force of literature and history in articulating and illuminating the human condition.

Ranging as widely as Grene’s own interests in Greek and Roman antiquity, in drama, poetry, and the novel, in the art of translation, and in English history, these essays include discussions of the Odyssey and Ulysses, the Metamorphoses of Ovid and Apuleius, Mallarmé’s English and T. S. Eliot’s religion, and the mutually antipathetic minds of Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson. The introduction by Todd Breyfogle sketches for the first time the contours of Grene’s own thought.

Classicists, political theorists, intellectual historians, philosophers, and students of literature will all find much of value in the individual essays here and in the juxtaposition of their themes.

Contributors: Saul Bellow, Seth Benardete, Todd Breyfogle, Amirthanayagam P. David, Wendy Doniger, Mary Douglas, Joseph N. Frank, Victor Gourevitch, Nicholas Grene, W. R. Johnson, Brendan Kennelly, Edwin McClellan, Françoise Meltzer, Stephanie Nelson, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Martin Ostwald, Robert B. Pippin, James Redfield, Sandra F. Siegel, Norma Thompson, and David Tracy

405 pages | 6 x 9 | © 1999

Ancient Studies

Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Texts and the Rendering of Imaginative Reality TODD BREYFOGLE
Prelude
In a Drizzly Light BRENDAN KENNELLY
Part One
Atheism and the Religiosity of Euripides MARTIN OSTWALD
Poetry and Philosophy in Aristophanes’ Clouds JAMES REDFIELD
Calypso’s Choice: Immortality and Heroic Striving in the Odyssey and Ulysses STEPHANIE NELSON
The Homecomings of Odysseus and Nala WENDY DONIGER
A Bird, a Mouse, a Frog, and Some Fish: A New Reading of Leviticus II MARY DOUGLAS
Confabulating Cephalus: Self-Narration in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (7.672-865) W.R. JOHNSON
Memory and Imagination in Augustine’s Confessions TODD BREYFOGLE
Metamorphosis and Conversion: Apuleius’s Metamorphoses SETH BENARDETE
Against Entertainment: Plato and the Poets Revisited NORMA THOMPSON
Interlude
"The Photographer": An Essay by Soseki TRANSLATED BY EDWIN McCLELLAN
Part Two
"I Know Thee Not, Old Man": The Renunciation of Falstaff AMIRTHANAYAGAM P. DAVID
Transforming Conventions: The Troupe of Decorum and Thomas Sheridan’s Captain O’Blunder SANDRA F. SIEGEL
Synge: Reality and the Imagination of Place NICHOLAS GRENE
Mallarmé and English FRANçOISE MELTZER
T.S. Eliot as Religious Thinker: Four Quartets DAVID TRACY
Rousseau on Providence VICTOR GOUREVITCH
Dostoyevsky’s Trojan Horse: A Raw Youth JOSEPH N. FRANK
Henry James and Modern Moral Life ROBERT B. PIPPIN
Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson: Mutually Antipathetic Minds CONOR CRUISE O’BRIEN
Postlude
Problems in American Literature SAUL BELLOW
Select Bibliography: Works by David Grene
Contributors
Index

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