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Anagnorisis: Scenes and Themes of Recognition and Revelation in Western Literature
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Anagnorisis has been called ‘one of the great works of comparative literary criticism of our time’. It is a book that spans the millennia, the adventures of Ulysses in Homer and God’s mysterious appearance to Abraham in Genesis, down not only to Joyce’s Ulysses and Thomas Mann’s Joseph and his Brothers, but also to Dumas’ Count of Montecristo, Borges’s ‘The Immortal’, and Walcott's Omeros.
‘Anagnorisis’ means ‘recognition’. Aristotle defined it simply as ‘the passage from ignorance to knowledge’. But the knowledge one gains in anagnorisis is neither scientific nor abstract – it is living knowledge in the flesh, as Euripides’ Helen understood when, seeing her husband again after many years, she exclaimed: ‘to recognize those we love is a god.
‘Anagnorisis’ means ‘recognition’. Aristotle defined it simply as ‘the passage from ignorance to knowledge’. But the knowledge one gains in anagnorisis is neither scientific nor abstract – it is living knowledge in the flesh, as Euripides’ Helen understood when, seeing her husband again after many years, she exclaimed: ‘to recognize those we love is a god.
Piero Boitani, PhD Cambridge (1975). Emeritus Comparative Literature at Rome ‘Sapienza’ University. Editor of the ‘Greek and Latin Writers’ series of Fondazione Valla. Balzan Prize for Comparative Literature, 2016. He has published many volumes in English, the most recent of which is A New Sublime: Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics (2020).
Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Texts, Translations, Bibliography, and Style
Introduction
1 Cinderella and the Greeks
2 Aristotle and the Philosophy of Anagnorisis
3 Re-Cognition, Reading, and Reconnaissance
1 Odysseus, Ulysses, Nobody
The Universe of Recognition
2 Reason
Electra and Hamlet
3 Towards Nothingness
Oedipus and Lear
4 Recognizing God
5 To Recognize Is a God
Helen, Magdalen, Hermione, Marina – Menuchim
6 A Spark of Love
Medieval Recognitions
7 I know the Signs of the Ancient Flame
Dante’s Recognitions
8 Are You Here?
Brunetto, Dante, and Eliot
9 Through Time and Space
Intertextual Recognition
10 To Conclude and Re-Cognize
The Pain and Joy of Compassion
Index
Acknowledgments
Note on Texts, Translations, Bibliography, and Style
Introduction
1 Cinderella and the Greeks
2 Aristotle and the Philosophy of Anagnorisis
3 Re-Cognition, Reading, and Reconnaissance
1 Odysseus, Ulysses, Nobody
The Universe of Recognition
2 Reason
Electra and Hamlet
3 Towards Nothingness
Oedipus and Lear
4 Recognizing God
5 To Recognize Is a God
Helen, Magdalen, Hermione, Marina – Menuchim
6 A Spark of Love
Medieval Recognitions
7 I know the Signs of the Ancient Flame
Dante’s Recognitions
8 Are You Here?
Brunetto, Dante, and Eliot
9 Through Time and Space
Intertextual Recognition
10 To Conclude and Re-Cognize
The Pain and Joy of Compassion
Index
All interested in the history of a key concept in poetics and philosophy and the shapes it takes in literary masterpieces from Homer to the present. Undergraduate and graduate students in the Humanities, academics, general readers.