| Tragedy, Authority, and Trickery: The Poetics of Embedded Letters in Josephus Contributor(s): Olson, Ryan S. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0674053370 ISBN-13: 9780674053373 Publisher: Harvard University Press OUR PRICE: $24.70 Product Type: Paperback Published: September 2010 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Ancient And Classical - History | Ancient - Rome - History | Jewish - General |
| Dewey: 933.050 |
| LCCN: 2010023641 |
| Series: Hellenic Studies |
| Physical Information: 0.68" H x 6.35" W x 8.94" (0.98 lbs) 225 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - Ancient (To 499 A.D.) - Ethnic Orientation - Jewish - Cultural Region - Middle East - Cultural Region - Italy |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: To prove his sons' treachery, Herod embellished a letter. To certify his history of Vespasian's Judaean campaign, Josephus marshaled epistolary testimony. To alleviate a domestic problem, the Israelite king David sent a missive with a man it marks for death. Arguing for the importance of the first-century historian Josephus to the study of classical and Hellenistic literature, Tragedy, Authority, and Trickery investigates letters in Josephus' texts. The author breaks new ground by analyzing classical, Hellenistic, and Jewish texts' use of letters, comparing those texts to Josephus' narratives, a virtual archive containing hundreds of letters. An external voice similar to speeches, embedded letters raise questions of authority, drive and color dramatic scenes, and function at textual and meta-textual levels to deceive their readers. Josephus, contextualized in a complex intellectual and cultural milieu, sustains and develops epistolarity in important ways that will be of interest to classicists, historians, theologians, and comparatists. |
Contributor Bio(s): Olson, Ryan S.: - Ryan S. Olson earned his doctorate in classical languages and literatures from Oxford and is an independent scholar working in philanthropy. |