Book contents
- The Authoritative Historian
- The Authoritative Historian
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Myth, Fiction, and the Historian’s Authority
- Part II Dislocating Authority in Herodotus’ Histories
- Part III Performing Collective and Personal Authority
- Part IV Generic Transformations
- Part V Innovation within Tradition
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
Introduction
The Authoritative Historian
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2022
- The Authoritative Historian
- The Authoritative Historian
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Myth, Fiction, and the Historian’s Authority
- Part II Dislocating Authority in Herodotus’ Histories
- Part III Performing Collective and Personal Authority
- Part IV Generic Transformations
- Part V Innovation within Tradition
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
Summary
The ancient historian’s privileged discursive position within the text depends upon the creation of a circuit of consent with the audience, one that establishes the narrator’s power and authority in detailing the unfolding of past events, their causes, and the agents animating them. The contract between the narrator and audience is brought about by the careful curation of the historian’s agency in and out of the process of textual production. In antiquity, the stakes for this curation were even higher than in modernity because of the widespread association of literary production with individual character. The struggle for authority was uniquely pressing for Greek and Roman historians, as their texts could not call upon the inspiration of the Muse as the poets could. As a result, the self-positioning of the historian was highly self-aware and charged with meaning, constructed in relation to the authority of the poets, but with a degree of distancing from these figures and their Muse in the development of a new mode of narrative.
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- The Authoritative HistorianTradition and Innovation in Ancient Historiography, pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023