The Poetics of Colonization From City to Text in Archaic Greece [Hardcover]

Tales of archaic Greek city foundations continue to be told and retold long after the colonies themselves were settled, and this book explores how the ancient Greeks constructed their memory of founding new cities overseas. Greek stories about colonizing Sicily or the Black Sea in the seventh century B.C.E. are no more transparent, no less culturally constructed than nineteenth-century British tales of empire in India or Africa; they are every bit as much about power, language, and cultural appropriation. This book brings anthropological and literary theory to bear on the narratives that later Greeks tell about founding colonies and the processes through which the colonized are assimilated into the familiar story-lines, metaphors, and rituals of the colonizers. The distinctiveness and the universality of the Greek colonial representations are explored through explicit comparison with later European narratives of new world settlement.

A very considerable achievement....Dougherty elucidates very clearly the ways in which new stories are constructed on old patterns, and often throws light on the underlying background. One feels that she is bringing us closer to the mentality of an ancient society, bringing us closer to the ways in which the Greeks, almost unconsciously, looked at a highly significant side of their own history. Her exposition is clear, and the book is a pleasure to read--a good introduction not only to the topic but also to the methodology employed. --Bryn Mawr Classical Reviewand c

This text is extremely interesting and has something for all students of ancient Greece. --Religious Studies Review

...a thoughtful and fascinating piece of scholarship, which deserves attentive reading by anyone interested in Greek colonization. --Storia della Storiografia