Greek "concepts"

[hilaryh]

Can anyone give me a "brief" explanation of what these are? my daughter e-mailed me from uni with a question involving these and literature. Got me flummoxed.

[fairkatrina]

You'll have to be more specific. What was the exact question she sent?

[hilaryh]

"if literature is not a Greek concept, how can the Oresteia
be literature??

[fairkatrina]

Basically the Greeks didn't have "literature" as we define it. Instead they set their cultural store by tragedies and orations. What the question is asking is about semantics, if the Greeks had no expression for literature, or any cultural reverence for it, how can we class something Greek as both literature and culturally relevent. She'll have to discuss taking something out of the concept of its own time; with the Greeks this is particularly relevant for sociological relationships (i.e. can you call the Greeks homosexuals when they had no concept of homosexuality?) There is a lot of literature available in this area if she wants to see some of the arguments. Also she will have to look at how the piece was valued in its own time (after all it must have been to still exist now) and discuss whether or not literature existed in a different way to how we define it today. The Greeks had literature, libraries, universities etc, so she will have to explore what notions they employed, which are comparable to what we would consider today as 'literature.' Hope that helps (and I haven't boggled you!)

[hilaryh]

crikey thats a lot to digest ,will send it straight on to her.thanks for you help fairkatirina

[Peter Pedant]

she presumably has also to say somewhere what the oresteia is

basically the plays went around in threes plus one (satyr play)

I think the oresteia is the only one by Aeschylus ( v old tragis Gk poet) of which all three survive.

Lucky choice huh ?

SO there has to be criteria for Lit
which applied to things written before these concepts came into being fulfil the criteria

Drag in Shakespeare - did he know he was writing lit ? Jonson did and wrote in a specifically lit style. Jonson's plays were better thought of at the time - his works were published in his life time whereas Sh 's works were done postumously

This question is quite deep and is a specific example of 'If I can think of something, does it have to exist ?'

[Peter Pedant]

must have been valued to be in a library

Oh Yeah bung in the bit about sevens - seven plays of the ancients exist because 7 was a magic number in the Library of Alexandria

and oops if anyone wrote more than 7 (didnt he write 104 or was that someone else ?) then the remained went down the ancient greek shredder.....(true)