Greek Literature and the Ideal: The Pragmatics of Space from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Age

Greek Literature and the Ideal contends that the development of Greek literature was motivated by the need to endow political geography with a sense of purposeful structure. Alexander Kirichenko argues that Greek literature was a crucial factor in the cultural production of space, and Greek geography a crucial factor in the production of literary meaning. The book focuses on the idealizing images that Greek literature created of three spatial patterns ofpower distribution: a decentralized network of aristocratically governed communities (Archaic Greece); a democratic city controlling an empire (Classical Athens); and a microcosm of Greek culture located on foreign soil, ruled by quasi-divine royals, and populated by immigrants (Ptolemaic Alexandria). Kirichenkodraws connections between the formation of these idealizing images and the emergence of such literary modes of meaning making as the authoritative communication of the truth, the dialogic encouragement to search for the...