New Online at the CHS: Black Doves Speak: Herodotus and the Languages of Barbarians

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Clik here to view.The CHS team is very pleased to announce the online publication of Black Doves Speak: Herodotus and the Languages of Barbarians, by Rosaria Vignolo Munson on the CHS website. (available

for purchase in print through Harvard University Press).
In Greek thought, barbaroi are utterers of unintelligible or inarticulate sounds. What importance does the text of

Herodotus’s Histories attribute to language as a criterion of ethnic identity? The answer to this question illuminates the empirical foundations of Herodotus’s pluralistic worldview. The first translator of cultures also translates, describes, and evaluates foreign speech to a degree unparalleled by other Greek ancient authors. For Herodotus, language is an area of interesting but surprisingly unproblematic difference, which he offers to his audience as a model for coming to terms in a neutral way with other, more emotionally charged, cultural differences.

Rosaria Munson is Professor of Classics at Swarthmore College.

Rosaria Vignolo Munson, Black Doves Speak: Herodotus and the Languages of Barbarians

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Greek Speakers

2. The Ethnographer and Foreign Languages

3. Herodotos hermēneus

4. The Meaning of Language Difference

Bibliography
 

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Clik here to view.
Readers interested in this work may also like to read:

• Gregory Nagy, Pindar’s Homer: The lyric possession of an epic past
• Alexander Hollmann, The Master of Signs: Signs and the Interpretation of Signs in Herodotus’ Histories
• Katharina Wesselmann, Mythical Structures in Herodotus’ Histories

Newest full-text publications online for free from CHS:

• Gregory Nagy, Masterpieces of Metonymy: From Ancient Greek Times to Now
• James Bradley Wells, Pindar’s Verbal Art: An Enthnographic Study of Epinician Style
• Sarah Hitch, King of Sacrifice: Ritual and Royal Authority in the Iliad