M S Silk
Biographic Data
| ID | 1003133 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M S Silk |
| GIVEN NAMES | M S |
| FAMILY NAME | Silk |
| SIGNATURE | SILK M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 55 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Pindar, Olympian 2.5–7, Text and Commentary—with Excursions to ‘Perictione’, Empedocles and Euripides’ Hippolytus
In 1998, I suggested a new text for a notably corrupt passage in Pindar's Isthmian 5. This article is in effect a sequel to that earlier discussion. In the 1998 article, I proposed, inter alia, that the modern vulgate text of I. 5.58, ἐλπίδων ἔκνισ’ ὄπιν, is indefensible and the product of scribal corruption in antiquity, and that chief among the indefensible products of corruption there is the supposed secular use of ὄπις, as if used to mean som…
Homer
This volume is a distinctive critical introduction to Homer's Iliad, the earliest epic poem, and the earliest known work of literature in ancient Greece. Michael Silk deals with the poem's historical context, its composition and its extensive influence, and relates its literary power to the peculiar coherence and inter-relation of such aspects of the poem as its style, character-portrayal and ideology. Through use of quotation from the original a…
Nietzsche, Decadence, and the Greeks
Decadence" is Nietzsche's last great preoccupation, which has a decisive role in the books he composed in 1888: Nietzsche Contra Wagner, The Wagner Case, Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo. From a conventional view of modern decadence established by French writers like Gautier and Bourget, Nietzsche constructs a radically new set of relationships whereby decadence is understood as a perennial and inevitable phenomenon, but one t…
Serious Issues and ‘Serious Comedy’
Three Openings
The Lesson of the Lyric Poetry
This chapter examines Aristophanes' lyrics. It discusses that in his lyric writing, his words have their own impressiveness — and yet his achievement here is strikingly uneven. It adds that his use of language is diverse wherein the level of the language varies from low to high and that, in some degree, the distinctions involved correspond with metrical differentiae, so that iambic dialogue tends to be lower than sung lyric. It clarifies that Ari…
Comedy and Tragedy
This chapter explains that Aristophanes' comments on comedy are often hard to understand because they presuppose a culture whose literary perspectives are — to us — almost inconceivably narrow. It clarifies that for Aristophanes and the Greek poets during his time, literature begins with Homer and consists largely of a few major writers in each of a few different media or genres, most of which exclusively belong to the world of the Greek city-sta…
Language and Style
Character and Characterization
This chapter explains that according to Aristophanes, the character is the second important element in a drama. It adds that stylistic switches, particularly discontinuity, affect character development. It clarifies that the transformational capacities of the characters are reminiscent of the powers of a poetic image. However, image needs careful formulation, because a number of Aristophanes' characters invite comparison with images on quite diff…
Causal Sequences and Other Patterns
This chapter argues that the Aristophanic plot-line often provides an impression of realist continuity because there are innumerable moments, or miniature sequences, of consequential action. It explains that the apparent ‘jumps’ associated with Aristophanes' characters and plots are not only related in kind: they may be the same thing. It notes that Aristophanic Old Comedy is best seen as a sequence of relational states between one interest party…
Mode, Meaning, and Assessment
This chapter begins by discussing Aristophanes' claim that his poetry possesses authority; and this protestation of authority is the focus of his long engagement with tragedy and his near obsession with exploring the limits of comic appropriation of tragedy. It explains that even when Aristophanes used tragic words, he resists any such attempt for he uses tragedy to help make a series of new paratragic verbal modes, each of which involves some ve…
Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy
Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy
This book presents a radically new critical study of Aristophanes. Against the limited view of Aristophanes as Athenian theatrical satirist, the author identifies him as one of the world's great writers. Through an exploration of Aristophanes' comic poetry, informed by a wide range of theory from Kierkegaard to Adorno, a particular consideration of Aristophanes' own understanding of his medium, and challenging comparisons with modern literature, …
Tragedy and the Tragic
The Greeks invented tragedy; and from the age of the Greeks to the present day, tragedy has been seen to be a uniquely powerful and affecting form of art. But what makes it what it is? This challenging volume of twenty-nine new essays has an exceptional range - from Aeschylus to Sean O'Casey, from Aristotle to Rene Girard - but also a consistent focus on the ultimate question: how best to define or understand Greek tragedy in particular and trage…
The “six parts of tragedy” in Aristotle's poetics
All students of the Poetics can see that Aristotle's theory of tragedy sometimes resembles a handbook on dramatic composition. The scope of this ‘resemblance’, however, is rarely acknowledged in modern times. ‘Aristotle's approach to tragedy’, writes Stephen Halliwell, is ‘ au fond , a system of theoretical premises and reasoning.’ This, from the author of the most comprehensive, and most significant, discussion of the Poetics in recent years, so…
LSJ and the Problem of Poetic Archaism
‘It is supposed’, declared the poet Wordsworth in 1802, ‘that by the act of writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association; that he not only thus apprizes the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded. This exponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must in different eras of literature have excite…
Nietzsche on Tragedy
Preface Note 1. Germany and Greece 2. Biographical background I: Nietzsche and his early interests 3. Biographical background II: the genesis of The Birth of Tragedy 4. The argument of The Birth of Tragedy 5. The aftermath 6. Nietzsche's account of Greece 7. Mode and originality 8. Tragedy, music and aesthetics 9. Nietzsche and earlier German theories of tragedy 10. Style and philosophy Notes Bibliography Index
Interaction in Poetic Imagery
Interaction in Poetic Imagery with Special Reference to Early Greek Poetry
This is an unusual and original contribution to literary theory. Michael Silk is a classicist, but his book is concerned not only with the literature of antiquity, but also with the theory of literature as such: it investigates an aspect of poetic imagery in the practical context of ancient poetry. In the course of the investigation, many illustrative passages from English verse are discussed, but the corpus of poetry chosen for particular attent…
Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy
This book presents a radically new critical study of Aristophanes. Against the limited view of Aristophanes as Athenian theatrical satirist, the author identifies him as one of the world's great writers. Through an exploration of Aristophanes' comic poetry, informed by a wide range of theory from Kierkegaard to Adorno, a particular consideration of Aristophanes' own understanding of his medium, and challenging comparisons with modern literature, …
LSJ and the Problem of Poetic Archaism
‘It is supposed’, declared the poet Wordsworth in 1802, ‘that by the act of writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association; that he not only thus apprizes the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded. This exponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must in different eras of literature have excite…
Interaction in Poetic Imagery with Special Reference to Early Greek Poetry
This is an unusual and original contribution to literary theory. Michael Silk is a classicist, but his book is concerned not only with the literature of antiquity, but also with the theory of literature as such: it investigates an aspect of poetic imagery in the practical context of ancient poetry. In the course of the investigation, many illustrative passages from English verse are discussed, but the corpus of poetry chosen for particular attent…
Interaction in Poetic Imagery
Nietzsche on Tragedy
Preface Note 1. Germany and Greece 2. Biographical background I: Nietzsche and his early interests 3. Biographical background II: the genesis of The Birth of Tragedy 4. The argument of The Birth of Tragedy 5. The aftermath 6. Nietzsche's account of Greece 7. Mode and originality 8. Tragedy, music and aesthetics 9. Nietzsche and earlier German theories of tragedy 10. Style and philosophy Notes Bibliography Index
LSJ and the Problem of Poetic Archaism
‘It is supposed’, declared the poet Wordsworth in 1802, ‘that by the act of writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association; that he not only thus apprizes the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded. This exponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must in different eras of literature have excite…
The “six parts of tragedy” in Aristotle's poetics
All students of the Poetics can see that Aristotle's theory of tragedy sometimes resembles a handbook on dramatic composition. The scope of this ‘resemblance’, however, is rarely acknowledged in modern times. ‘Aristotle's approach to tragedy’, writes Stephen Halliwell, is ‘ au fond , a system of theoretical premises and reasoning.’ This, from the author of the most comprehensive, and most significant, discussion of the Poetics in recent years, so…
Tragedy and the Tragic
The Greeks invented tragedy; and from the age of the Greeks to the present day, tragedy has been seen to be a uniquely powerful and affecting form of art. But what makes it what it is? This challenging volume of twenty-nine new essays has an exceptional range - from Aeschylus to Sean O'Casey, from Aristotle to Rene Girard - but also a consistent focus on the ultimate question: how best to define or understand Greek tragedy in particular and trage…
Serious Issues and ‘Serious Comedy’
Three Openings
The Lesson of the Lyric Poetry
This chapter examines Aristophanes' lyrics. It discusses that in his lyric writing, his words have their own impressiveness — and yet his achievement here is strikingly uneven. It adds that his use of language is diverse wherein the level of the language varies from low to high and that, in some degree, the distinctions involved correspond with metrical differentiae, so that iambic dialogue tends to be lower than sung lyric. It clarifies that Ari…
Comedy and Tragedy
This chapter explains that Aristophanes' comments on comedy are often hard to understand because they presuppose a culture whose literary perspectives are — to us — almost inconceivably narrow. It clarifies that for Aristophanes and the Greek poets during his time, literature begins with Homer and consists largely of a few major writers in each of a few different media or genres, most of which exclusively belong to the world of the Greek city-sta…
Language and Style
Character and Characterization
This chapter explains that according to Aristophanes, the character is the second important element in a drama. It adds that stylistic switches, particularly discontinuity, affect character development. It clarifies that the transformational capacities of the characters are reminiscent of the powers of a poetic image. However, image needs careful formulation, because a number of Aristophanes' characters invite comparison with images on quite diff…
Causal Sequences and Other Patterns
This chapter argues that the Aristophanic plot-line often provides an impression of realist continuity because there are innumerable moments, or miniature sequences, of consequential action. It explains that the apparent ‘jumps’ associated with Aristophanes' characters and plots are not only related in kind: they may be the same thing. It notes that Aristophanic Old Comedy is best seen as a sequence of relational states between one interest party…
Mode, Meaning, and Assessment
This chapter begins by discussing Aristophanes' claim that his poetry possesses authority; and this protestation of authority is the focus of his long engagement with tragedy and his near obsession with exploring the limits of comic appropriation of tragedy. It explains that even when Aristophanes used tragic words, he resists any such attempt for he uses tragedy to help make a series of new paratragic verbal modes, each of which involves some ve…
Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy
Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy
This book presents a radically new critical study of Aristophanes. Against the limited view of Aristophanes as Athenian theatrical satirist, the author identifies him as one of the world's great writers. Through an exploration of Aristophanes' comic poetry, informed by a wide range of theory from Kierkegaard to Adorno, a particular consideration of Aristophanes' own understanding of his medium, and challenging comparisons with modern literature, …
Homer
This volume is a distinctive critical introduction to Homer's Iliad, the earliest epic poem, and the earliest known work of literature in ancient Greece. Michael Silk deals with the poem's historical context, its composition and its extensive influence, and relates its literary power to the peculiar coherence and inter-relation of such aspects of the poem as its style, character-portrayal and ideology. Through use of quotation from the original a…
Nietzsche, Decadence, and the Greeks
Decadence" is Nietzsche's last great preoccupation, which has a decisive role in the books he composed in 1888: Nietzsche Contra Wagner, The Wagner Case, Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo. From a conventional view of modern decadence established by French writers like Gautier and Bourget, Nietzsche constructs a radically new set of relationships whereby decadence is understood as a perennial and inevitable phenomenon, but one t…
Pindar, Olympian 2.5–7, Text and Commentary—with Excursions to ‘Perictione’, Empedocles and Euripides’ Hippolytus
In 1998, I suggested a new text for a notably corrupt passage in Pindar's Isthmian 5. This article is in effect a sequel to that earlier discussion. In the 1998 article, I proposed, inter alia, that the modern vulgate text of I. 5.58, ἐλπίδων ἔκνισ’ ὄπιν, is indefensible and the product of scribal corruption in antiquity, and that chief among the indefensible products of corruption there is the supposed secular use of ὄπις, as if used to mean som…
Art (15 works) · Literature (15 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Poetry (8 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (6 works) · History (6 works) · Comedy (5 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works)