Backing into the Future: The Classical Tradition and Its Renewal

Bernard Knox, "the foremost classicist of our time" (Maynard Mack), presents a collection of illuminating essays on diverse topics, united by their common defense of the classics, by their common concern that renewal and innovation go hand in hand with tradition, and by Knox's wit, humanity, and elegant prose. Backing into the Future opens with a group of essays on individual "Poets and Heroes" of antiquity (exploring such topics as Homer's masterly psychological insight into the character of Achilles, the playful and startlingly obscene poetry of Catullus, and Ovid's poetry of exile). The book then spirals gracefully outward to "Men, Gods, and Cities" (including essays on the Delphic Oracle, the brief and glorious appearance of Athenian democracy in fifth-century Athens, the "quarrel" between Greek tragedy and Greek philosophy, and Caligula - an emperor who has been, Knox argues, the victim of centuries of bad press). The collection closes with reflections on "Renewals" - the survival and transformation of the classics into the present age - reflections that include critiques of Derek Walcott's brilliant narrative poem Omeros and T. E. Lawrence's fascinating translation of the Odyssey, as well as thoughts on the problems of teaching the classics today. Backing into the Future encompasses the many lives of Bernard Knox - classicist, historian, literary critic, and defender of the humanities - a man who has brought the world of ancient Greece and Rome to life for the uninitiated reader and scholar alike.

Publishers Weekly

Eminent classicist Knox mines history for insights into the renewal of cultural traditions in this miscellany of 18 previously published essays, reviews and lectures. In a panoramic survey of ``the Athenian century'' (fifth century B.C.), he assesses the achievements of Greek democracy. In another piece Knox ( The Oldest Dead White European Males ) muses on the Achilles of Homer's Iliad , whose stubborn attachment to an ideal image of self was his downfall. There is an engaging essay on Roman poet Ovid's fruitful exile afer emperor Augustus banished him to what is now Romania, and a meditation on how Plato, Socrates and Sophocles answered the question, ``How shall we live?'' Knox gauges modern encounters with classical tradition, such as T. E. Lawrence's immersion in Greek literature and philosophy, refracted through his travels in Arabia, and Derek Walcott's epic poem Omeros , which appropriates Homeric tradition to tell the saga of villagers in his native Caribbean island of St. Lucia. (Feb.)