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Home pages: The Greatest Literature of All Time
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ANONYMOUS author of "The Eloquent Peasant" (c.1875 BCE) Haven't much of a clue who this writer was. "The Eloquent Peasant" is thought to have been written around the same time as "The Tale of Sinuhe", about the middle of Egypt's Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, but this only narrows its author down to several generations. Some say versions of the story were told for a couple centuries before this and others have put the the date of composition as late as 1800 BCE. The story, as we have it today, is actually pieced together from four incomplete manuscripts, which do not always agree in their overlapping sections. Proper names for people and places in the story often differ among the versions. One thing we can guess is that the author, if there was a single author, was a member of the affluent, educated class. Not only would someone from the poor classes be too illiterate to set the story down in hieroglyphics, but he would be ignorant of the fine intellectual points discussed by the "eloquent peasant" of the story. In the Middle Kingdom however the Egytian ruling classes and their functionaries reveled in literature and rhetoric (the art of persuasive speaking). "The Eloquent Peasant" would have been a great entertainment for them, as well as expressing the ideals that supposedly guided their lives. — Eric |
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© Copyright 2004 Eric McMillan. All rights reserved.
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