Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power

Can a speaker's words ever be faithfully reported? History, philosophy, ethnography, political theory, linguistics, and literary criticism all involve debates about discourse and representation. By drawing from Plato's theory of discourse, the lively analysis of speech presentation in this book provides a coherent and original contribution to these debates, and highlights the problems involved when speech becomes both the object and the medium of narrativerepresentation. The opening chapters offer fresh insights on ideology, intertextuality, literary language, and historiography, and reveal important connections between them. These insights are thenapplied in specific critical treatments of - Virgil's Aeneid, of Petronius' Satyricon, and of scenes involving messengers and angels in classical and European epic. Throughout this study, ancient texts are discussed in conjunction with examples from later traditions. Overall, this book uses Latin literature to demonstrate the theoretical and ideological importance of speech presentation for a number of contemporary disciplines.

“'This is a surprising book and [it] deserves a wide audience. Laird makes a strong case for the use of narratology in classics, and simultaneously initiates a critique of the ideology of narrative representation. His vision of the contact zone between classics and theory is not the usualone-way traffic.'Alessandro Barchiesi, University of Verona”

This is a demanding but highly original and stimulating study'Philip Hardie, Religious Studies Review, Vol 27, No 2, April 2001This book examines the ways in which speech is reported within literary texts, and illuminates from a wide variety of angles the implications of the formal features of speech presentation for issues of power, authority, genre, and intertextuality.'Philip Hardie, Religious Studies Review, Vol 27, No 2, April 2001`This is a surprising book and [it] deserves a wide audience. Laird makes a strong case for the use of narratology in classics, and simultaneously initiates a critique of the ideology of narrative representation. His vision of the contact zone between classics and theory is not the usual one-way traffic.'Alessandro Barchiesi, University of Verona

Andrew Laird is Reader in Classical Literature at Warwick University.

Can a speaker's words ever be faithfully reported? History, philosophy, ethnography, political theory, linguistics, and literary criticism all involve debates about discourse and representation. By drawing from Plato's theory of discourse, the lively analysis of speech presentation in this book provides a coherent and original contribution to these debates, and highlights the problems involved when speech becomes both the object and the medium of narrative representation. The opening chapters offer fresh insights on ideology, intertextuality, literary language, and historiography, and reveal important connections between them. These insights are then applied in specific critical treatments of - Virgil's Aeneid, of Petronius' Satyricon, and of scenes involving messengers and angels in classical and European epic. Throughout this study, ancient texts are discussed in conjunction with examples from later traditions. Overall, this book uses Latin literature to demonstrate the theoretical and ideological importance of speech presentation for a number of contemporary disciplines.

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