The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature, by Gilbert Highet
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The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature, by Gilbert Highet
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Originally published in 1949, Gilbert Highet's seminal The Classical Tradition is a herculean feat of comparative literature and a landmark publication in the history of classical reception. As Highet states in the opening lines of his Preface, this book outlines "the chief ways in which Greek and Latin influence has moulded the literatures of western Europe and America". With that simple statement, Highet takes his reader on a sweeping exploration of the history of western literature. To summarize what he covers is a near-impossible task. Discussions of Ovid and French literature of the Middle Ages and Chaucer's engagement with Virgil and Cicero lead, swiftly, into arguments of Christian versus "pagan" works in the Renaissance, Baroque imitations of Seneca, and the (re)birth of satire. Building momentum through Byron, Tennyson, and the rise of "art of art's sake", Highet, at last, arrives at his conclusion: the birth and establishment of modernism. Though his humanist style may appear out-of-date in today's postmodernist world, there is a value to ensuring this influential work reaches a new generation, and Highet's light touch and persuasive, engaging voice guarantee the book's usefulness for a contemporary audience. Indeed, the book is free of the jargon-filled style of literary criticism that plagues much of current scholarship. Accompanied by a new foreword by renown critic Harold Bloom, this reissue will enable new readers to appreciate the enormous legacy of classical literature in the canonical works of medieval, Renaissance, and modern Europe and America.
The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature, by Gilbert Highet - Amazon Sales Rank: #615859 in Books
- Published on: 2015-05-21
- Released on: 2015-05-21
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 5.30" h x 1.70" w x 8.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 808 pages
The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature, by Gilbert Highet Review "Solidly grounded and solidly built...[Highet] deals with every period, every movement, every individual, and every separate work as an interesting special case for which he tries to find the special explanation."--The New Yorker
"An excellent outline...[an] intelligent, erudite, perceptive interpretation...a book for the times."--The Nation
"It is Highet's appreciate of good literature...which gives a special charm to his book...[It] will be read with gratitude by many."--Times Literary Supplement
"Having reread Gilbert Highet's The Classical Tradition, I am once again under its spell. The book, like Curtius' European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, is a monument to a certain moment of mid-20th-century classicism, deeply humane, fundamentally conservative, committed to putting back together what seemed like the shattered pieces of Western civilization in the wake of Nazi barbarism. It is its vast scope, its capacious overview, that gives it its power."--Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University
"More than sixty years after Gilbert Highet's book first appeared, it remains the best single guide to the whole afterlife of Greek and Latin literature. The Classical Tradition does full justice to the complexity of this millenial story: Highet shows us both how ancient books shaped later readers, and how medieval and modern writers used classical elements to build their own, distinctive literatures. Learned, epigrammatic, and humanely opinionated, Highet's book is as readable as it is comprehensive."--Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
From the Back Cover This book is an outline of the chief ways in which Greek and Latin influence has moulded the literatures of western Europe and America.
About the Author Gilbert Highet (1906-1978) was Professor of Greek and Latin and Anthon Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Columbia University.Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University.
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Most helpful customer reviews
78 of 78 people found the following review helpful. Superb guide to European literature, among other things By PseudoDionysius In writing reviews I adhere to the policy that five stars should be given only to books that profoundly alter your perspective. In that sense, this book deserves to be spangled liberally with a good sized constellation.Ever wanted an approachable and informative guide to Western Literature? Have you ever tackled some purported classic that left you wondering why those damn nymphs and fauns keep proliferating? Your quest has ended: this book is the Baedeker of Western European Literature that all you literature addicts have been looking for.First of all, the author is dazzlingly erudite; he is apparently at home in Greek, Latin, English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian at least. Its primary purpose is to show the hidden scaffolding of Greco-Roman classics in Western literature, age by country, by selecting a choice group of writers with his personal preferences attached. The result is remarkably readable, never ostentatious, and his thesis rarely imposes strain on belief because the proof is always at hand. Thus the reader learns the overtones of classics in Shakespeare, or is made to see the hidden Doric column in Byron's passions fairly concretely.But in my opinion, this book is truly excellent (1) for the list of influential writers in all ages that he had himself hand selected (I've never heard of Abraham a Santa Clara and now I'm itching for a translation), and most importantly, (2) because it gives the necessary cultural backdrop that anchors a given author to an era with all its advantages and limitations. For example, the book gives a reason why the Augustan poets (Dryden, Pope and friends) were driven to mincing affectations (partly a reaction to the Renaissance, partly a particularly Baroque censorship of vulgar words that comes from a misunderstanding of the classics. Highet provides some choice sample of Juvenal's trenchant and vulgar satires as a counterexample).Of course, all books must have some faults. First, this book is very anglophillic; when works of two nations are compared, the British are crowned with the laurel with somewhat suspicious frequency. Whether this represents the truth is far beyond my capacity, only I submit that if I were a Frenchman, I would contest some of the outcomes. Second, his preference is certainly open to criticism. I may be alone in this, but I never found a single page of Gibbon's magnum opus soporific. I don't agree with his encomiastic treatment of Byron, either. I thought Coleridge was ushered off the stage too speedily. And sometimes you do get the feeling that an author with extensive classical training is definitely favored in the eye of a very classicist author.The nettlesome issue of a hierarchy in writers is bound to cause some clashes with readers' opinions. But no matter: I am very certain that this book will still provide an addictively informative read to anyone with an interest in reading a sweeping survey of European literature. This book is a MUST READ for amateur/professional literati, world literature bookworms (me), and ...... especially the classicists. Because the book's final and most salutary influence is that it reintroduces the Greco-Roman classics to our age where the classics field is increasingly untilled. If the very fact that a millenium of writers have turned - whether coerced by social convention or not - continuously to the Greco-Roman classics does not convince us, after rading this book one can't help but wonder whether, beyond the frigid marmoreal busts that say nothing and the wild raging toga party orgies, the ancients really have something very urgent to say to the present, or that they say it better than any of us alive.
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful. Gripping, erudite and scholarly By A Customer It is difficult to believe that one person can so eloquently present the influences of Greek and Roman literature on Western European literature with such care and enthusiasm, given that the scope of the work covers almost 2,000 years. Gilbert Highet is a true scholar and this volume is an inspiration to any reader who wishes to understand what Greek and Roman literature has meant to civilization.
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful. The perfect follow up to Jaeger's Paideia By Christoph B. Gondek I had the good fortune to read The Classical Tradition right after finishing Werner Jaeger's "Paideia" and the two works make an incredibly compelling case for the importance of classical study. Highet does take you on a tour of Western Lit with Greek and Latin authors close by. I learned about The Battle of the Books, the baroque era's rather slavish following of Aristotle's theories and met a whole bunch of authors I had never known (I am also waiting for those Abraham a Santa Clara translations to see if he is as entertaining as Highet makes him out to be)I've read a lot of Highet's books and can tell you there are no duds. I am reading Poets in a Landscape right now and it is hard to put down. Also, check out the surveys of Greek and Latin Literature written by his colleague at Columbia, Moses Hadas.
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