Reveals how certain strategic metaphors embedded in the early Western literary canon have promoted-and continue to promote-systems of inequality and social control. Collins examines texts ranging from the Homeric epics and the Platonic dialogues to Virgil's Aeneid and the Book of Revelation. Drawing on the linguistic and documentary evidence of usages in early societies, chiefly Greek and Hebrew, Collins has produced a penetrating examination of social and personal structures in those worlds.

About the Author
Christopher Collins is professor of English at New York University. His previous books include The Act of Poetry, Reading the Written Image: Verbal Play, Interpretation, and the Roots of Iconophobia, and The Poetics of the Mind's Eye: Literature and the Psychology of Imagination.

Reviews
A forceful and highly original study of the implications of the organization of human discourse along the lines of personal pronouns. . . . While clearly authoritative and not skimping its evidence, Authority Figures is at the same time gracefully written and easily accessible. As such it could be used in every pedagogic context from beginning humanities courses to advanced seminars. -- Albert Cook, Brown University
This study will be of great interest to those who share the author's linguistic and anthropological approach to literature . . . advanced scholars . . . will find . . . useful insights in it. Those seeking to understand the achievements of Homer, Plato, and Vergil will find much better approaches even in the area of linguistics, which is an important focus of this study. * CHOICE *



Book Information
ISBN 9780847682393
Author Christopher Collins
Format Paperback
Page Count 196
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Weight(grams) 336g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 149mm * 16mm