The First Pagan Historian: The Fortunes of a Fraud from Antiquity to the Enlightenment

Author:   Frederic Clark (Assistant Professor of Classics, Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Southern California - Dornsife)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
ISBN:  

9780190492304


Pages:   366
Publication Date:   10 December 2020
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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The First Pagan Historian: The Fortunes of a Fraud from Antiquity to the Enlightenment


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Overview

In The History of the Destruction of Troy, Dares the Phrygian boldly claimed to be an eyewitness to the Trojan War, while challenging the accounts of two of the ancient world's most canonical poets, Homer and Virgil. For over a millennium, Dares' work was circulated as the first pagan history. It promised facts and only facts about what really happened at Troy DL precise casualty figures, no mention of mythical phenomena, and a claim that Troy fell when Aeneas and other Trojans betrayed their city and opened its gates to the Greeks. But for all its intrigue, the work was as fake as it was sensational. From the late antique encyclopedist Isidore of Seville to Thomas Jefferson, The First Pagan Historian offers the first comprehensive account of Dares' rise and fall as a reliable and canonical guide to the distant past. Along the way, it reconstructs the central role of forgery in longstanding debates over the nature of history, fiction, criticism, philology, and myth, from ancient Rome to the Enlightenment.

Full Product Details

Author:   Frederic Clark (Assistant Professor of Classics, Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Southern California - Dornsife)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.40cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 15.20cm
Weight:   0.476kg
ISBN:  

9780190492304


ISBN 10:   0190492309
Pages:   366
Publication Date:   10 December 2020
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction Dares Phrygius, First Pagan Historian Chapter One Dares Forged: Histories Real and Imagined in the Classical and Late Antique Worlds Chapter Two Dares Compiled: From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy Chapter Three Dares Translated: Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction Chapter Four Dares Attacked: Early Modern Criticism and the Formation of an Ancient Canon Chapter Five Dares Printed and Philologized: The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger's Fortunes Chapter Six Dares Survives: Webs of Misattribution and the Persistence of the Distant Past Conclusion The Perennial Quarrel: Dares between Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

Reviews

This is an important contribution to our study of ancient texts and their afterlives. At the same time, it is a penetrating meditation on the fluid nature of textual authenticity. From late antiquity to the early modern era, the putatively eyewitness History of the Destruction of Troy by Dares the Phrygian was enormously exploited as an authentic counter-narrative to the poetic versions of Homer and Virgil. Yet its claims and reputation, from reverence to repudiation, have remained little studied, until Frederic Clark's broad-ranging and learned book. The book's historical reach, and the range of skills and materials it employs, are magisterial; they are deployed with enviable discipline and economy. * Christopher Baswell, Columbia University and Barnard College * In this magnificent book, Frederic Clark has contributed a milestone to the interdisciplinary study of the European Renaissance, medieval European culture, and the field of classical reception. With enormous expertise and discernment, he discusses more than a hundred of Dares' readers - enthusiastic, antagonistic, perplexed. And Clark explores, on a vast and exhilarating plane, their cultural, political, and literary assumptions; their concerns reach far beyond the exposure of forgery into the history of printing, the veracity of Virgil's Aeneid, and the theory of historical witnesses. His story marvelously combines cultural change with surprising continuities between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I recommend it to a broad group of erudite readers and students. * Kristine Haugen, California Institute of Technology * In this marvelous book, Frederic Clark traces the making and reception of a forgery - a very popular and durable work by one Dares the Phrygian, which told the story of the Trojan War from the losing side. He introduces the reader to the extraordinary characters - scribes and printers, chroniclers and poets - who kept Dares' account alive for many centuries, and the scholars who came to see it as a fake. He challenges conventional ideas about the borders between forgery and fiction, and medieval and Renaissance scholarship. And he does it all in graceful, readable prose. * Anthony T. Grafton, Princeton University *


In this marvelous book, Frederic Clark traces the making and reception of a forgery - a very popular and durable work by one Dares the Phrygian, which told the story of the Trojan War from the losing side. He introduces the reader to the extraordinary characters - scribes and printers, chroniclers and poets - who kept Dares' account alive for many centuries, and the scholars who came to see it as a fake. He challenges conventional ideas about the borders between forgery and fiction, and medieval and Renaissance scholarship. And he does it all in graceful, readable prose. * Anthony T. Grafton, Princeton University * In this magnificent book, Frederic Clark has contributed a milestone to the interdisciplinary study of the European Renaissance, medieval European culture, and the field of classical reception. With enormous expertise and discernment, he discusses more than a hundred of Dares' readers - enthusiastic, antagonistic, perplexed. And Clark explores, on a vast and exhilarating plane, their cultural, political, and literary assumptions; their concerns reach far beyond the exposure of forgery into the history of printing, the veracity of Virgil's Aeneid, and the theory of historical witnesses. His story marvelously combines cultural change with surprising continuities between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I recommend it to a broad group of erudite readers and students. * Kristine Haugen, California Institute of Technology * This is an important contribution to our study of ancient texts and their afterlives. At the same time, it is a penetrating meditation on the fluid nature of textual authenticity. From late antiquity to the early modern era, the putatively eyewitness History of the Destruction of Troy by Dares the Phrygian was enormously exploited as an authentic counter-narrative to the poetic versions of Homer and Virgil. Yet its claims and reputation, from reverence to repudiation, have remained little studied, until Frederic Clark's broad-ranging and learned book. The book's historical reach, and the range of skills and materials it employs, are magisterial; they are deployed with enviable discipline and economy. * Christopher Baswell, Columbia University and Barnard College *


Author Information

Frederic Clark is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Southern California.

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