Liddell and Scott: The History, Methodology, and Languages of the World's Leading Lexicon of Ancient Greek

by Christopher Stray, Michael Clarke, Joshua T. Katz

Overview

The Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott is one of the most famous dictionaries in the world, and for the past century-and-a-half has been a constant and indispensable presence in teaching, learning, and research on ancient Greek throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. Despite continuous modification and updating, it is still recognizably a Victorian creation; at the same time, however, it carries undiminished authority both for its account of the Greek language and for its system of organizing and presenting linguistic data.

The present volume brings together essays by twenty-two scholars on all aspects of the history, constitution, and problematics of this extraordinary work, enabling the reader both to understand its complex history and to appreciate it as a monument to the challenges and pitfalls of classical scholarship. The contributors have combined a variety of approaches and methodologies - historical, philological, theoretical - in order to situate the book within the various disciplines to which it is relevant, from semantics, lexicography, and historical linguistics, to literary theory, Victorian studies, and the history of the book. Paying tribute to the Lexicon's enormous effect on the evolving theory and practice of lexicography, it also includes a section looking forward to new developments in dictionary-making in the digital age, bringing comprehensively up to date the question of what the future holds for this fascinating and perplexing monument to the challenges of understanding an ancient language.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198810803
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	9.40(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Christopher Stray, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Classics, Ancient History, and Egyptology, Swansea University,Michael Clarke, Professor of Classics, National University of Ireland, Galway,Joshua T. Katz, Cotsen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics, Princeton University

Christopher Stray is Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Classics, Ancient History, and Egyptology at Swansea University. He has held visiting positions at Wolfson College, Cambridge; the Beinecke Library, Yale University; and at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He works on the history and sociology of classical teaching and learning at school and university level, and has also published on examinations, institutional slang, and textbooks. He contributed three chapters to the History of Oxford University Press, and is currently working on contributions to a forthcoming history of Trinity College, Cambridge.


Michael Clarke is Professor of Classics at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His early research was closely focused on Homeric epic, with publications including Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer (OUP, 2000). Since that time he has pursued two complementary research directions: historical semantics and language change on the one hand and comparative approaches to epic and myth on the other. He is the author of numerous studies of classical influences on medieval literatures, and is working on a long-term study of Togail Troi, the Middle Irish saga of the Trojan War.

Joshua T. Katz is Cotsen Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics, and a member of the Program in Linguistics at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1998. A linguist by training, a classicist by profession, and a comparative philologist at heart, he has published widely in the languages, literatures, and cultures of the ancient world, from India to Ireland via Greece, Rome, and the Near East. His recent work has concentrated on how Archaic Greek poems begin, as well as on the history and practice of wordplay, but he maintains an active interest in Vergil, etymology, and badgers.

Table of Contents

FrontmatterList of Figures and TablesList of AbbreviationsList of ContributorsA Note on the History of the Lexicon, Christopher StrayI. HISTORY AND CONSTITUTION OF THE LEXICON1. Liddell and Scott in Historical Context: Victorian Beginnings, Twentieth-Century Developments, Christopher Stray2. Dictionaries as Translations: English in the Lexicon, Margaret Williamson3. Latin in the Lexicon, David Butterfield4. Obscenity: A Problem for the Lexicographer, Amy Coker5. Etymology and Etymologies in the Lexicon, Joshua T. KatzII. PERIODS AND GENRES OF EVIDENCE6. Incorporating New Evidence: Mycenaean Greek in the Revised Supplement (1996), Brent Vine7. A Canonical Author: The Case of Hesiod, Tom Mackenzie8. Philosophy and Linguistic Authority: The Problem of Plato's Greek, Christopher Rowe9. Medical Vocabulary, with Especial Reference to the Hippocratic Corpus, Elizabeth Craik10. The Greek of the New Testament, Patrick James11. The Ancient, the Medieval, and the Modern in a Greek-English Lexicon, or How To Get Your Daily 'Bread' in Greek Any Day Through the Ages, Mark Janse12. Greek Dialects in the Lexicon, Philomen Probert13. Between Cunning and Chaos: metis, Evelien BrackeIII. METHODOLOGY AND PROBLEMS14. Looking for Unity in a Dictionary Entry: A Perspective from Prototype Theory, Michael Clarke15. Discourse Particles in LSJ: A Fresh Look at γε, David Goldstein16. LSJ and the Diachronic Taxonomy of the Greek Vocabulary, James Clackson17. Literary Lexicography: Aims and Principles, Michael SilkIV. COMPARISONS IN TIME AND SPACE18. Lessons Learned During my Time at the Lexikon des fruhgriechischen Epos (LfgrE), Michael Meier-Brugger19. Diminishing Returns and New Challenges, Martin L. West†20. baptō: An Illustration of the State of our Ancient Greek Dictionaries, Anne Thompson21. Liddell and Scott and the Oxford English Dictionary, John ConsidineEndmatterBibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

"in the end ... what we have [in the existing 'Lexicon'] is a work of remarkably high quality. Put another way, LSJ remains not just important but essential for serious scholarly work on ancient Greek because, whatever else one may say about them and their 'Lexicon', Liddell, Scott, and Jones were very, very good at what they did." — S. Douglas Olson, GNOMON

"This is a magisterial survey, which will demand the attention of all who write on this word in the future." — JAMES DIGGLE, Queens' College, Cambridge, THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

"The editors have done a good job" — James Diggle, Queens' College, Cambridge, THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

"Liddell and Scott...is a book that is fascinating — full of detailed and intelligent appraisal and analysis — and...lets us see is how much more care and attention we need to pay to how LSJ has been constructed and what its impact and limitations are." — Simon Goldhill, King's College, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"We have been given a masterclass in lexicography by one of the world's leading scholars. Production values are high, and the editors are to be warmly commended on their successful completion of what was surely a most arduous task." — Colin Leach, Classics for All

From the Publisher