Philology and Greek Literature

Abstract This essay provides an overview of the recent revival of interest in philology (a discipline in which both textual criticism and interpretation are at home). Although Greek and Latin have long been central to philological practice, this has changed, and a new renaissance in philology is emerging in the modern languages and comparative literature. Nonetheless, it is clear that this new, global, and comparative philology owes much to Greek philology, just as Greek philology may in turn learn much from it. After suggesting that philology today includes both textual scholarship and interpretation (this is slightly controversial), I turn to philology’s tendency to take place behind the scenes, then to its role as the site of literature; its inevitably self-critical procedures; its commitment to the concrete; and, finally, its use of figural rhetoric to generate meaning.