Authority and History

Ancient Models, Modern Questions

Juliana Bastos Marques, Federico Santangelo, Juliana Bastos Marques, Federico Santangelo

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781350269484
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350269460
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Historiographie

This book examines authority in discourse from ancient to modern historians, while also presenting instances of current subversions of the classical rhetorical ethos. Ancient rhetoric set out the rules of authority in discourse, and directly affected the claims of Greek and Roman historians to truth. These working principles were consolidated in modern tradition, but not without modifications. The contemporary world, in its turn, subverts in many new ways the weight of the author's claim to legitimacy and truth, through the active role of the audiences.

How have the ancient claims to authority worked and changed from their own times to our post-modern, digital world? Online uses and outreach displays of the classical past, especially through social media, have altered the balance of the authority traditionally bestowed upon the ancients, demonstrating what the linguistic turn has shown: the role of the reader is as important as that of the writer.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One Ancient Models
• 1 Authority and Authenticity
• 2 Poetry as History: The Authority of Lucan as a Historian
• 3 Truth and Authority
• 4 The Time of Restitution of All Things: Past as Future in Michael Servetus
• Part Two Modern Questions
• 5 Classics and Western Civilization: The Troubling History of an Authoritative Narrative
• 6 “The Society That Separates Its Scholars from Its Keyboard Warriors . . .”: Tracking Thucydides on Twitter
• 7 Is Livy a Good Wikipedian? Authority and Audience in Ancient Historiography and Contemporary Anonymous Writing
• 8 The New Agora? Online Communities and a New Rhetoric
• 9 Classical Literature and Contemporary Classics
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright