Before paideia: Representations of education in Aeschylean tragedy (Greece).

摘要

Before Paideia: Representations of Education in Aeschylean Tragedy examines the pre-history of Greek education during the archaic and early classical periods (c. 800--c. 440 BC), before the articulation of education as paideia at the end of the fifth century BC. I argue for the need to view education not simply as a practice or institution, but also as an idea or part of various competing ideologies; thus it is necessary to write a history of representations of education in archaic and early classical poetry---that is, an investigation into how Greek poets talk about "teaching" and "learning" (both literally and metaphorically) and to what ends they deploy such talk. On the one hand, investigation of narratives about educational practices in the historiographical tradition offers insight into how some Greeks of the archaic and classical periods both explored the status of the community and examined the nature of citizenship and power. On the other hand, in the archaic and early classical Greek poetic tradition, speakers in Homer, Hesiod, and Theognis both deploy "teaching" and "learning" language and adopt the personae of teachers and learners as a means of self-representation and of persuading their audience. Thus the poetics of educational practices and educational language serve to explore and shape community, society, and politics. Moreover, various relationships of power found in ancient education are specifically used as metonyms for relationships of political power; for example, the image of the didaskalos or teacher who dominates the student is used to represent the tyrant who subjugates the citizen. These analogical relationships between education and political power are central to the Oresteia and Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus. Both tragedies represent the political tyrant as an oppressive teacher and dramatize attempts to find alternative and legitimate modes of education within the polis or kosmos. Indeed, these Aeschylean tragedies present a unique and hitherto unexplored opportunity to study the idea of education at the intersection of archaic, aristocratic ideology and the emerging democracy of classical Athens.