[B-Greek] poetry and agency (was Sophocles' Ajax (was "Voice matters again"))

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Fri Mar 27 14:57:20 EDT 2009


On Mar 27, 2009, at 4:59 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:

> Beyond that, I rather think that creative literary artists, whether  
> poets or novelists or dramatists, or whatever, have discovered  
> heretofore and will continue to discover ways in which to frustrate  
> the ordinary reader/listener's expectation that the discourse  
> attended to will ensue in an orderly sequential narration such as  
> that promised by Luke in the opening statement of his gospel. I  
> don't think that the Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk and White  
> intended or succeeded at telling writers like William Faulkner or  
> Sophocles or Ernest Hemingway how they should order the elements in  
> their sentences.

Thank you Carl,

The audience who heard these texts in performance might be compared to  
hearing a latin Mass, you know what is going to be said in advance, so  
a little ellipsis isn't going to cause much confusion.

I am trying to read in blocks, something on the order of a page or two  
in the Oxford text of Sophocles. Once I have gone over it lightly then  
I go back and try and figure everything out in detail, looking in the  
grammars and so forth. This can be a very frustrating experience,  
moving from NT Gospels or Epistles to Attic Tragedy produces something  
like shell shock. My goal is to understand what is going on well  
enough that I can "read it" rather than just decipher it like some  
mystical hieroglyphic tomb inscription.

Thanks again,

Elizabeth Kline







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