The book is an analysis of Greek Hellenistic literature with the help of conceptual tools of cultural studies and media theory. Its main aim is to describe the cultural process during which Greek authors in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. made the "textualization of experience", that is, transferred phenomenalistically understood qualities of human sensory experience to the categories characteristic for textual description – as far as possible for them. This process is shown by examples from the works of Xenophon, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Philitas of Kos and Archimedes. The author also tries to show some of the consequences that the phenomenon of the Hellenistic textualization of experience had for the later epochs of European culture.
The chorus of Euripides' Bacchae heralds the arrival of the god Dionysus by promising that "right away, the whole world will dance in a chorus" (αὐτίκα γᾶ πᾶσα χορεύσει, 114). Their exuberant claim reflects the enthusiasm for dance generally expressed in early Greek sources. Indeed, it has been well established that dance – specifically choreia (communal song-dance) – played a significant role in archaic and classical Greek social life and was thus accorded a high level of value and esteem in art and literature. My dissertation argues that this esteemed status does not extend to the performance of solo and individualized dance, and demonstrates that Greek literary discourse betrays a deep ambivalence towards dance (orchēsis) when isolated from the multimedia art of choreia.This project thus approaches Greek dance, which has hitherto been studied almost exclusively in the context of the chorus, from a fresh angle. I establish that singular dancing often signifies disruption, violation, and vulnerability within the social and political order. At the same time, I show that the representation of individualized dance constitutes a distinctive mechanism adopted by poets, playwrights, historians and philosophers to foreground and explore the complex relationship between verbal and somatic expression. As a result, the representation of individualized dance in Greek literature offers insight into the place of dance in Greek thought, while also enabling us to identify the particular biases and agendas at work in the literary description of dance performance.My dissertation develops a distinctive methodology for analyzing the relationship between dance and literature. I begin from a basic conviction, grounded in the scholarship of dance studies, that verbal descriptions and literary representations of dance are not neutral reflections of embodied practices, but rather ideological and interpretive forms that work to frame and define our perception of dance. I argue that choreia, as a synthesis of vocal, instrumental, and kinetic expression, becomes an efficient image for poets, philosophers, and historians seeking to harness dance to the power of language. My work thus demonstrates that orchēsis, as individual kinetic expression and kinesthetic experience, not only signifies social and political disruption, but is also imagined as an expressive mode that may resist or re-figure the forces of language and verbal description.My first chapter argues that individual dancers provide a critically engaged alternative to the prevailing model of communal, choral performance, which tends to be logocentric. This chapter lays out a dominant paradigm of choral dance as constructed in early Greek literature, offers a typology of solo and individualized dance forms, and previews the insights to be gained through the consideration of dance "beyond choreia." Chapter Two addresses the descriptions of both choral and individualized dance in Odyssey 8, demonstrating that singular and virtuosic dance is particularly emblematic of Phaeacian culture and that its description operates as a means by which Odysseus and Alcinous competitively negotiate their relative positions of status and authority within the poem. Chapters Three and Four examine individual male and female dancers respectively in epic, lyric, and drama, identifying a complex network of political and artistic concerns that coalesce around literary representations of each type of performer. I argue that solo male dancers tend to be depicted as disruptive and anti-social political actors (e.g., Pericles in Ion of Chios fr. 109 Leurini, Philocleon in Arist. Wasps 1474ff), while individual and outstanding female dancers are marked by their sexual appeal and consequent vulnerability (e.g., the maiden chorēgoi of Alcman 1 PMG, Cassandra in Eur. Troades 308ff). These chapters also focus on the performance contexts of specific songs and their ability to frame and define closely related instances of dance. My fifth and final chapter explores how Herodotus, Plato, and Xenophon deploy the various models of individual dance discussed in the preceding chapters in the service of their own historical and philosophical projects. While my primary focus throughout is on literary description, I also discuss the visual and material evidence for solo dance, particularly in cases where it contrasts with the textual tradition.The project as a whole makes two major contributions to the study of Greek literature, culture, and performance. First, it brings together the surviving representations of solo and individualized dance and considers them as evidence for the cultural discourse surrounding both orchēsis and choreia. Second, it develops a theoretical framework for articulating the complex relationship between literary descriptions and historical performance, bringing the scholarly insights of dance studies to bear upon the ancient world.
Her zaman insanın ve hayatın bir parçası olarak kabul edilen şiddet; doğal olarak söylemin ve dolayısıyla da yazının bir parçası olarak insanlık tarihinin ana temalarından birisini oluşturmuştur. Güç ve baskı uygulanarak insanlara bedensel veya ruhsal zararlar veren, bireysel veya toplu hareketlerin tümü olarak adlandırılan şiddet; özel veya kolektif, dolaylı veya doğrudan, cürümsel veya kamusal açılardan incelenebilir. Hepsinin ortak noktası ise bir tarafın diğer tarafı veya doğrudan bireyi şiddet yoluyla baskı altına alması ve ötekileştirmesidir. Klasik Yunan'dan itibaren yazının ana temalarından biri olan ve özellikle Homeros, Aiskhülos, Sofokles ve Euripides gibi ozan ve yazarların tüm eserlerinde sergilenen şiddet, insan ve iktidarın özüne de bir ayna tutma görevi üstlenmiştir. Bu çalışmada Batı edebiyatının temel taşları olarak konumlandırılan Homeros'un İlyada ve Odysseia isimli eserleri ile antik dönemin üç büyük tragedya yazarı Aiskhülos, Sofokles ve Euripides'in oyunlarında şiddetin izdüşümleri tartışılarak Batı edebiyatına yön veren baskın temalardan birisinin şiddet olduğu ortaya çıkarılacaktır
Representations of Hades, the Underworld, and the afterlife in ancient Greek literature have traditionally been studied from a religious or mythological perspective. Scholars have often tried to extrapolate historical practices and eschatological beliefs about life after death from accounts of rituals and myths surrounding funerary practices, cult beliefs, necromantic encounters, and descents by heroes to the Underworld. As a result of this focus, scholars have generally overlooked the narrative function of Underworld scenes. In this project, I examine ancient Underworld scenes from Homer to Plato as a type of literary device containing unique rhetorical features and functions. I argue that Underworld scenes are embedded authorial commentaries, which allow communication between author and audience in an exercise of narrative self-reflection. Underworld scenes condense the actions and themes of the main story into an abbreviated space while also situating their parent narratives within a dynamic historical and literary tradition. Through these scenes, authors and artists create networks of texts by including allusions and story patterns, which can activate similar tales of ghostly encounter (nekuia), underworld journeys (katabaseis), punishment for sinners, and rewards for the "blessed." Underworld scenes "open up" dialogues between texts and characters across time and space so they could engage with each other and their tradition. Thus, Homer could imagine Odysseus talking to the ghosts of Achilles and Agamemnon in the Odyssey as a contemplation of heroism, and Plato could imagine Socrates anticipating afterlife conversations about justice with Homer, Ajax and Orpheus in the Apology.Chapter 1 presents the parameters of Underworld scenes and the methodologies that will be used in analyzing these scenes. Chapter 2 examines the structure of Underworld scenes in early Archaic poetry as well as the distinct language and image set which allowed communication between authors and audiences. Chapter 3 shows how Greek epinician and lyric poets used Underworld scenes to assimilate their patrons to heroes who achieved a "blessed" afterlife. Chapter 4 focuses on the use of Underworld scenes on the dramatic stage and in funerary contexts in Classical Athens to portray and offer solutions to contemporary political and social issues. Finally, Chapter 5 explores famous Underworld episodes in Plato's dialogues and examines how Socrates uses Underworld scenes to overwrite traditional sources and redefine the afterlife as a stage of life, like childhood and old age.
"Friendship (philia) is a complex and multi-faceted concept that is frequently attested in ancient Greek literature and thought. It is also an important social phenomenon and an institution that features in classical Greek social, cultural, and intellectual history. This collected volume seeks to complement the extensive modern scholarship on this topic by shedding light on complementary representations, nuances and tensions of friendship in a range of different sources, literary, epigraphic, and visual. It offers a broad overview of the contours of this important social phenomenon and helps the reader get a glimpse of its depth and richness"--
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The Diorisis Ancient Greek Corpus is a digital collection of ancient Greek texts (from Homer to the early fifth century ad) compiled for linguistic analyses, and specifically with the purpose of developing a computational model of semantic change in Ancient Greek. The corpus consists of 820 texts sourced from open access digital libraries. The texts have been automatically enriched with morphological information for each word. The automatic assignment of words to the correct dictionary entry (lemmatization) has been disambiguated with the implementation of a part-of-speech tagger (a computer programme that may select the part of speech to which an ambiguous word belongs).
The first referenece to letter writing occurs in the first text of western literature, Homer's Iliad. From the very beginning, Greeks were enthusiastic letter writers, and letter writing became a distinct literary genre. Letters were included in the works of historians but they also formed the basis of works of fiction, and the formal substructure for many kinds of poem. Patricia Rosenmeyer, an authority on the history of the Greek letter, assembles in this book a representative selection of such 'literary letters', from Aelian and Alciphron to Philostrartus and the supposed letters of Themistocles. The book will be valuable for all students of Greek literature especially those studying Greek (and Latin) letter.
"In this work, one of Latin America's most renowned legal philosophers conducts a comprehensive survey of the ancient Greek understanding of the law, drawing on texts by poets (Hesiod), philosophers (Anaximander), playwrights (Aeschylus and Sophocles), and historians (Herodotus and Thucydides). The book ends with a finely detailed analysis of the relationship between language and reality in Aristotle, and the emergence of the notion of the system and its subsequent introduction into Roman law. The author's in-depth study of all these aspects makes this volume an essential reference for philosophers, jurists, and historians"--
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The temples and theatres of the ancient Greek world are widely known, but there is less familiarity with the houses in which people lived. In this book, Lisa Nevett provides an accessible introduction to the varied forms of housing found across the Greek world between c. 1000 and 200 BCE. Many houses adopted a courtyard structure which she sets within a broader chronological, geographical and socio-economic context. The book explores how housing shaped - and was shaped by - patterns of domestic life, at Athens and in other urban communities. It also points to a rapid change in the scale, elaboration and layout of the largest houses. This is associated with a shift away from expressing solidarity with peers in the local urban community towards advertising personal status and participation in a network of elite households which stretched across the Mediterranean. Instructors, students and general readers will welcome this stimulating volume.
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Scholars have long been divided over whether the Amazons of Greek legend actually existed. 'Postcolonial Amazons' offers a ground-breaking re-evaluation of the place of martial women in antiquity, bridging the gap between myth and reality by expanding our conception of the Amazon archetype to include the real female warriors of the ancient world.
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This dissertation contends that we must account for the values we have inherited from the Greco-Roman tradition, and for the (anti-)colonial histories of the Americas, when we practice and teach reading in the United States today. This comparative study of ancient Greek literature from the Second Sophistic (c. 60-230 CE) and post-1960s U.S. Latina/o literature examines the intersection of ethics, reading, and language politics to reconsider our own conceptions of literacy, literary reading, and education in the present. Both literary traditions exhibit a heightened attention to the educational models and language hierarchies that shape readers into social and political subjects. In the Second Sophistic, Greek writers actively produced a "classical" heritage, as well as their own sociopolitical identities, through literary and linguistic training in an elite Greek dialect; this cultural education was entangled with legacies of Greek and Roman imperialism and conquest. Similarly, contemporary U.S. Latina/o writers grapple with the colonial and the revolutionary legacies of alphabetic literacy in the Americas, especially the relationship between literate education (in a dominant, colonial language) and sociopolitical belonging. Latina/o writers contest the equation of (proper) English with U.S. sociopolitical inclusion to summon a more inclusive, multilingual reading public. Beginning with the second- or third-century CE work of Athenaeus, and moving to the work of Julia Alvarez in the early twenty-first century, the first two chapters argue for the ethical significance of reading practices that diverge from normative educational models of linguistic and literary mastery. The final two chapters emphasize how the embodied dimensions of reading intersect with language politics. The literary production of Lucian in the second century and of Norma Elia Cantú in the late twentieth century highlight the material dimensions of language and literacy instruction, such as forms of bodily discipline that train readers' gestures and tongues. Ultimately, this study argues that how we conceive of, practice, and teach reading are of ethical importance; it seeks an inclusive understanding of reading that accounts for a plurality of perspectives, multiple literacies and linguistic heritages, and the diverse embodied practices of readers.