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Critical Moments In Classical Literature [Review], Lawrence Kim

Lawrence Kim

Critical Moments in Classical Literature is a curious book; deeply learned, elegantly written, and filled with subtle observations on a vast array of texts, but also somewhat diffuse, elusive, and in the end frustrating. On the face of it, the subtitle, Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses, is a good description of the book’s six chapters, each focused on a text constituting a ‘critical moment’ in ancient literary criticism: (1) Aristophanes’ Frogs, (2) Euripides’ Cyclops, (4) Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ On Imitation, (5) Longinus’ On the Sublime, and (6) Plutarch’s How the …