Literature and Classics and Scientific Intruders

Just finished reading Classics: Why it Matters by Neville Morley.  Prof. Morley makes a point that strikes close to the heart of this blog. Since the beginning, I’ve been wondering what gives me leave to stick my nose into literary analysis.

Literature and classics have something in common: literary scholars can’t agree on what “literature” is, and classicists can’t agree on what constitutes “classics”.  Prof. Morley solves the problem for them, in a way that is directly transferable over here.

Classics no longer seeks to define itself in terms of an exclusive right to interpret a limited, supposedly superior body of material; it aspires rather to be an open discipline, a meeting point for different perspectives — an agora, the central space of a Greek city, where people met for trade, politics and friendship, rather than a fortified acropolis.

p.44

I’ve noticed lots of people saying things to this effect.  In the humanities, lots of work has been done by scholars of the past. Rather than trying to exceed them in the directions they chose to work (which can be quite a challenge), the humanities progresses laterally, by bringing new perspectives from other disciplines.  The bumper sticker says “The Future is Collaborative”.

Classics has recently benefited from disciplines as far-flung as palynology; why shouldn’t literature benefit from the odd scientist weighing in?

The Ágora at Thessaloniki