Download or read book Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture written by Georgia Petridou and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ancient Greece, epiphanies were embedded in cultural production, and employed by the socio-political elite in both perpetuating pre-existing power-structures and constructing new ones. This volume is the first comprehensive survey of the history of divine epiphany as presented in the literary and epigraphic narratives of the Greek-speaking world. It demonstrates that divine epiphanies not only reveal what the Greeks thought about their gods; they tell us just as much about the preoccupations, the preconceptions, and the assumptions of ancient Greek religion and culture. In doing so, it explores the deities who were prone to epiphany and the contexts in which they manifested themselves, as well as the functions (narratives and situational) they served, addressing the cultural specificity of divine morphology and mortal-immortal interaction. Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture re-establishes epiphany as a crucial mode in Greek religious thought and practice, underlines its centrality in Greek cultural production, and foregrounds its impact on both the political and the societal organization of the ancient Greeks.

Download or read book Heroes Gods and the Role of Epiphany in English Epic Poetry written by E.L. Risden and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2008-07-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how epic poetry reflects cultural values, and how, in epic poems, the heroes must meet supernatural beings to find answers to essential questions. It begins with three chapters on ancient poetry (including The Iliad and The Odyssey, the Mahabharata, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Aeneid and the Bhagavad Gita). Subsequent chapters take up the main subject of the book, examining the evolution of English epic poetry from the anonymous Old English Beowulf to Spenser's The Faerie Queen, Milton's Paradise Lost, Blake's Milton, Wordsworth's The Prelude, Barett Browning's Aurora Leigh and Derek Walcott's 1990 poem Omeros.

Download or read book Epiphanies and Dreams in Greek Polytheism written by Michael Lipka and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While modern students of Greek religion are alert to the occasion-boundedness of epiphanies and divinatory dreams in Greek polytheism, they are curiously indifferent to the generic parameters of the relevant textual representations on which they build their argument. Instead, generic questions are normally left to the literary critic, who in turn is less interested in religion. To evaluate the relation of epiphanies and divinatory dreams to Greek polytheism, the book investigates relevant representations through all major textual genres in pagan antiquity. The evidence of the investigated genres suggests that the ‘epiphany-mindedness’ of the Greeks, postulated by most modern critics, is largely an academic chimaera, a late-comer of Christianizing 19th-century-scholarship. It is primarily founded on a misinterpretation of Homer’s notorious anthropomorphism (in the Iliad and Odyssey but also in the Homeric Hymns). This anthropomorphism, which is keenly absorbed by Greek drama and figural art, has very little to do with the religious lifeworld experience of the ancient Greeks, as it appears in other genres. By contrast, throughout all textual genres investigated here, divinatory dreams are represented as an ordinary and real part of the ancient Greeks' lifeworld experience.

Download or read book The New Simonides written by Deborah Boedeker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-06-14 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of his life (550-460 BC), the Greek poet Simonides produced poetic work of every kind then extant. Unfortunately, Simonides' corpus has survived only in fragments, though classical scholars have been studying his work for generations. The 1992 discovery of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri revolutionized the study of Simonides, casting particular light on the epic of Plataea. This edited volume gathers the best of the recent research on Simonides' newly expanded oeuvre into a single collection that will be an important reference for scholars of Greek poetry.

Download or read book Gaze Vision and Visuality in Ancient Greek Literature written by Alexandros Kampakoglou and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visual culture, performance and spectacle lay at the heart of all aspects of ancient Greek daily routine, such as court and assembly, cult and ritual, and art and culture. Seeing was considered the most secure means of obtaining knowledge, with many citing the etymological connection between ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ in ancient Greek as evidence for this. Seeing was also however often associated with mere appearances, false perception and deception. Gazing and visuality in the ancient Greek world have had a central place in the scholarship for some time now, enjoying an abundance of pertinent discussions and bibliography. If this book differs from the previous publications, it is in its emphasis on diverse genres: the concepts ‘gaze’, ‘vision’ and ‘visuality’ are considered across different Greek genres and media. The recipients of ancient Greek literature (both oral and written) were encouraged to perceive the narrated scenes as spectacles and to ‘follow the gaze’ of the characters in the narrative. By setting a broad time span, the evolution of visual culture in Greece is tracked, while also addressing broader topics such as theories of vision, the prominence of visuality in specific time periods, and the position of visuality in a hierarchisation of the senses.

Download or read book Greek Myth and Religion written by Albert Henrichs and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-08-05 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains the collected papers of Albert Henrichs on numerous subjects in ancient Greek myth and religion. What was ancient Greek religion really like? What is the reality of belief and action that lies behind the unwieldy sources, which stem from vast areas and epochs of the ancient world? What is the meaning, intended and otherwise, of religious action and speech in ancient Greece? Who were the Greek gods, how were they worshipped, and how were they viewed by those who worshipped them? One of the leading students of ancient Greek religion over the past five decades, Albert Henrichs, the Eliot Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University, combines wide and deep learning, a pragmatic, incisive approach to the sources, and an apt use of comparative perspectives. Henrichs breaks new ground in discussing sacrifice, libation, cultic identity, religious action and speech, epiphany, and the personalities of the gods. Special attention is devoted to ancient Greek sources on the ancient Persian prophet Mani, founder of Manichaeism. As a group, Albert Henrichs’ papers on Greek religion offer a basic education on Greek myth and religion and constitute a blueprint for serious study of the subject.

Download or read book Homer written by Andrew Ford and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew Ford here addresses, in a manner both engaging and richly informed, the perennial questions of what poetry is, how it came to be, and what it is for. Focusing on the critical moment in Western literature when the heroic tales of the Greek oral tradition began to be preserved in writing, he examines these questions in the light of Homeric poetry. Through fresh readings of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and referring to other early epics as well, Ford deepens our understanding of what poetry was at a time before written texts, before a developed sense of authorship, and before the existence of institutionalized criticism. Placing what is known about Homer's art in the wider context of Homer's world, Ford traces the effects of the oral tradition upon the development of the epic and addresses such issues as the sources of the poet's inspiration and the generic constraints upon epic composition. After exploring Homer's poetic vocabulary and his fictional and mythical representations of the art of singing, Ford reconstructs an idea of poetry much different from that put forth by previous interpreters. Arguing that Homer grounds his project in religious rather than literary or historical terms, he concludes that archaic poetry claims to give a uniquely transparent and immediate rendering of the past. Homer: The Poetry of the Past will be stimulating and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in the traditions of poetry, as well as for students and scholars in the fields of classics, literary theory and literary history, and intellectual history.

Download or read book Aphrodite and Eros written by Barbara Breitenberger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a groundbreaking revision of the popular image of Aphrodite and Eros that lives on in Roman poetry (Venus and Cupid) and has inspired artists for centuries. An interdisciplinary analysis of the Archaic period - using literary, iconographical, and cultic evidence - shows the distinct concept behind the two deities of love. Aphrodite's character, sphere of influence, and function feature in her traditional myths and are well reflected in cult. Eros, however, was not yet a similarly personified mythical figure at that stage, nor did he have an individual cult. Breitenberger follows the different stages of the development of Eros's personality. Originally a cosmic entity and an unpersonified aspect of Aphrodite, he was given his mythical identity by successive archaic lyric poets who were particularly keen to mythologize a male counterpart to the established love-goddess Aphrodite. This male love-god turns out to be the divinized homoerotic ideal of the male aristocracy 'worshipped' at their symposia. The development of the male love-god is taken as an example to demonstrate that poets' artistic innovation as well as their social and historical background played an important role in creating Greek mythology.

Download or read book Early China Ancient Greece written by Steven Shankman and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering book compares Chinese and Western thought to offer a bracing and unpredictable cross-cultural conversation. The work contributes to the emerging field of Sino-Hellenic studies, which links two great and influential cultures that, in fact, had virtually no contact during the ancient period. The patterns of thought and the cultural productions of early China and ancient Greece represent two significantly different responses to the myriad problems that human beings confront. Throughout this volume the comparisons between these cultures evince two critical ideas. First, that thinking is itself an inherently comparative activity. Through making comparisons, the familiar becomes strange, and the strange somewhat more familiar. Second, since we think through comparisons, we should think them all the way through. How valid and productive are the comparisons and contrasts made between particular works and different styles of thought that emerged from two different, although contemporaneous, cultural contexts?

Download or read book The Homeric Centos written by Anna Lefteratou and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Homeric Centos, a poem that is Homeric in style and biblical in theme, is a dramatic illustration of the creative cultural and religious dialogue between Classical Antiquity and Christianity taking place in the Roman Empire during the fifth century CE. The text is attributed to Eudocia, empress and poet, who died in exile in the Holy Land ca. 460. With lines drawn verbatim from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the poem begins with the Creation and Fall and ends with Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension. In this blend of Homeric style and Christian themes, there are also echoes of Classical and classicising literature, stretching from Homer and drama to imperial literature. Equally prominent are echoes of earlier Christian canonical and apocryphal works, verse models, and theological works. In The Homeric Centos: Homer and the Bible Interwoven, Anna Lefteratou analyzes the double inspiration of the poem by both classical and Christian traditions. This book explores the works relationship with the cultural milieu of the fifth century CE and offers in-depth analysis of the scenes of Creation and Fall, and Jesus' Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. This book exposes the work's debt to centuries of Homeric reception and interpretation as well as Christian literature and exegesis, and places it at the crossroads of Christian and pagan literary traditions.

Download or read book The Primacy of Vision in Virgil s Aeneid written by Riggs Alden Smith and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the masterpieces of Latin and, indeed, world literature, Virgil's Aeneid was written during the Augustan "renaissance" of architecture, art, and literature that redefined the Roman world in the early years of the empire. This period was marked by a transition from the use of rhetoric as a means of public persuasion to the use of images to display imperial power. Taking a fresh approach to Virgil's epic poem, Riggs Alden Smith argues that the Aeneid fundamentally participates in the Augustan shift from rhetoric to imagery because it gives primacy to vision over speech as the principal means of gathering and conveying information as it recounts the heroic adventures of Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome. Working from the theories of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Smith characterizes Aeneas as a voyant-visible, a person who both sees and is seen and who approaches the world through the faculty of vision. Engaging in close readings of key episodes throughout the poem, Smith shows how Aeneas repeatedly acts on what he sees rather than what he hears. Smith views Aeneas' final act of slaying Turnus, a character associated with the power of oratory, as the victory of vision over rhetoric, a triumph that reflects the ascendancy of visual symbols within Augustan society. Smith's new interpretation of the predominance of vision in the Aeneid makes it plain that Virgil's epic contributes to a new visual culture and a new mythology of Imperial Rome.

Download or read book Metalepsis written by Sebastian Matzner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Metalepsis' is a term from classical rhetoric, but in the twentieth century, it was re-framed more broadly as a crossing of the boundaries that separate distinct narrative worlds. This modern notion of metalepsis, introduced by Gérard Genette, has so far largely been theorized on the basis of examples from post-modern novels and films. Yet metalepsis has a much greater potential to address all sorts of transgressions between 'worlds' or 'levels', not only in post-modern but also pre-modern literature. This volume explores metalepsis in classical antiquity, considering questions such as: if metalepsis consists fundamentally in the breaking down of barriers, what sort of barriers and what sort of transgressions can the concept be fruitfully applied to? Can it be used within approaches other than narratology? Does metalepsis require recognisable levels of reality and fictionality, and if so, what role might be played by other planes, such as the past, the mythical or the divine? What form does metalepsis take in less obviously 'narrative' genres, such as lyric poetry? And how should it be understood in visual media? Reflecting on these questions sheds new light on important dynamics in ancient texts, and advances literary theory by probing how explorations of ancient metalepsis might change, refine, or extend our understanding of the concept itself.

Download or read book What is a God written by Alan B. Lloyd and published by Classical Press of Wales. This book was released on 2009-12-31 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent study Greek religion has often dissolved itself into many religions. The eleven original essays here focus both on extremes of the Greek world and on its classical 'centre'. Distinguished scholars examine the earliest traces of religious thought in the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures. Striking similarities are revealed between religious ideas of Greece and of non-Greek Asia. There are special studies of Apollo, Athena, and Dionysiac religion. And new patterns are identified in the archaic and classical thought of Heraclitus, Herodotus and Sophocles.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Homer written by Robert Fowler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-14 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Homer is a guide to the essential aspects of Homeric criticism and scholarship, including the reception of the poems in ancient and modern times. Written by an international team of scholars, it is intended to be the first port of call for students at all levels, with introductions to important subjects and suggestions for further exploration. Alongside traditional topics like the Homeric Question, the divine apparatus of the poems, the formulae, the characters and the archaeological background, there are detailed discussions of similes, speeches, the poet as story-teller and the genre of epic both within Greece and worldwide. The reception chapters include assessments of ancient Greek and Roman readings as well as selected modern interpretations from the eighteenth century to the present day. Chapters on Homer in English translation and 'Homer' in the history of ideas round out the collection.

Download or read book Plots of Epiphany written by John B. Weaver and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-02-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Past scholarship on the prison-escapes in the Acts of the Apostles has tended to focus on lexical similarities to Euripides' Bacchae, going so far as to argue for direct literary dependence. Moving beyond such explanations, the present study argues that miraculous prison-escape was a central event in a traditional and culturally significant story about the introduction and foundation of cults - a story discernable in the Bacchae and other ancient texts. When the mythic quality and cultural diffusion of the prison-escape narratives are taken into account, the resemblance of Lukan and Dionysian narrative episodes is seen to depend less on specific literary borrowing, and more on shared familiarity with cultural discourses involving the legitimating portrayal of new cults in the ancient world.

Download or read book Juvenal and the Satiric Genre written by Frederick Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-20 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While claiming to stand outside literature altogether, Roman verse satire was the most aggressively literary of Roman genres, Juvenal's particularly so. In the opening lines of the corpus, his performance creates an arena in which the various genres of his Graeco-Roman cultural inheritance jostle to be heard, and are suppressed by his own generic identity. Juvenal and the Satiric Genre considers the fluid nature of the generic field, and how Juvenal comes out of and fits into it. Specifically, it measures his use of names, his ambiguous and sometimes hostile relations with other genres, especially the queen of genres, epic, against his inherited and stated aim (of criticizing malefactors by name), and considers how the aspect of performance impinges on his multi-faceted satiric voice. This challenging series considers Greek and Roman literature primarily in relation to genre and theme. It also aims to place writer and original addressee in their social context. The series will appeal to both scholar and student, and to anyone interested in our classical inheritance.

Download or read book The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture written by André Fischer and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myths are a central part of our reality. But merely debunking them lets us forget why they are created in the first place and why we need them. André Fischer draws on key examples from German postwar culture, from novelists Hans Henny Jahnn and Hubert Fichte, to sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys, and filmmaker Werner Herzog, to show that mythmaking is an indispensable human practice in times of crisis. Against the background of mythologies based in nineteenth-century romanticism and their ideological continuation in Nazism, fresh forms of mythmaking in the narrative, visual, and performative arts emerged as an aesthetic paradigm in postwar modernism. Boldly rewriting the cultural history of an era and setting in transition, The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture counters the predominant narrative of an exclusively rational Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“coming to terms with the past”). Far from being merely reactionary, the turn toward myth offered a dimension of existential orientation that had been neglected by other influential aesthetic paradigms of the postwar period. Fischer’s wide-ranging, transmedia account offers an inclusive perspective on myth beyond storytelling and instead develops mythopoesis as a formal strategy of modernism at large.