Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Backing Into the Future: The Classical Tradition and Its Renewal

Backing Into the Future: The Classical Tradition and Its Renewal

Knox, Bernard

Paperback

Letters & EssaysLiterary Criticism

ISBN10: 0393331172
ISBN13: 9780393331172
Publisher: W W Norton & Co
Published: Feb 1 1994
Pages: 356
Weight: 0.99
Height: 0.79 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Prospective readers puzzled by the somewhat enigmatic title Backing into the Future may well come to the conclusion that it is a reference to the amusing film produced in 1985, called Back to the Future. But in fact the source of the title is much older. The phrase is based on a number of expressions found in ancient Greek literary texts: the chorus's description of its bewilderment in Sophocles's Oedipus the King, for example -- 'not seeing what is here nor what is behind' -- or the characterization of an older man in Homer's Odyssey as 'the one who sees what is in front and what is behind.' The natural reaction of the modern reader is to understand the first of these expressions as 'not seeing the present nor the past, ' and the second as 'who sees the future and the past.' But the Greek word opiso, which means literally 'behind' or 'back, ' refers not to the past but to the future. The early Greek imagination envisaged the past and the present as in front of us - we can see them. The future, invisible, is behind us. Only a few very wise men can see what is behind them; some of these men, like the blind prophet Tiresias, have been given this privilege by the gods. The rest of us, though we have our eyes, are walking blind, backwards into the future. --from the Foreword

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