Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power

Reviews / Votes

... this book is the product of hard thinking and hard work, and makes an important contribution to several fields of scholarship. * Journal of Roman Studies * Laird's work has important implications for those interested in narratology, theories of discourse, intertextuality, the construction and function of narrators, addressees and readers, Platonic poetics, and the interpretation of (in particular) epic, historiography, and Petronius. * Journal of Roman Studies * The title of Laird's book and its subtitle do not do justice to the breadth, ambition, and importance. * Journal of Roman Studies * This is a demanding but highly original and stimulating study. * Religious Studies Review * This book examines the ways in which speech is reported within literary texts, and illuminates from a wide variety of angles the implications of the formal features of speech presentation for issues of power, authority, genre, and intertextuality. * Religious Studies Review * This is a surprising book and [it] deserves a wide audience. Laird makes a strong case for the use of narratology in classics, and simultaneously initiates a critique of the ideology of narrative representation. His vision of the contact zone between classics and theory is not the usual one-way traffic. * Alessandro Barchiesi, University of Verona *