Helen and the Discourse of Denial in Stesichorus ' Palinode

Abstract

A textual tradition (e.g., a literary or scholarly tradition) can be charac terized as a protean body whose shape at any moment depends upon one's vantage point (the moment of the contemplated text) and about which it must simultaneously be said "it is this," and "it is not this," i.e., it is not what it had been before. At the same time, this démystification of the monumental sense of a tradition invites a sustained critique of the assump tions (aesthetic, cultural, historical, etc.) which create the "tradition" and is essential to warding off any appeal to a unique but universally privileged imagination.