Style Matters: The Life-Worlds of Ancient Literature

Abstract

Positing first that the history of literature, like the history of any art, is a history of style, this paper attempts to develop an ontological theory of style, in which style becomes the means whereby artist and audience share in a way of experiencing the world as a whole, as a “life-world” of connected existential possibilities. The history of literature and art therefore constitute, from this perspective, a history of the ways in which we as humans have experienced “being-in-the-world,” as my closing comparative analysis of Homer and Herodotus in terms of Archaic and Classical Greek statuary and philosophy attempts to show.