Author: A. D. Morrison
Publisher: University of London Press
ISBN: 9781905670093
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
Pindar's fifteen victory odes for Sicilian victors include some of Pindar's most impressive and widely admired poems, such as the first two Olympians and first three Pythians. The majority of the Sicilian odes date from between about 476 to 466 BC and were composed to celebrate the victories of the great tyrants of Sicily Hieron of Syracuse and Theron of Akragas or their families or courtiers at the crown games. The Sicilian tyrants made spectacular use of their wealth and power in competing in equestrian events at the games and in commissioning Pindar and Bacchylides to celebrate their victories in song. This book examines the Sicilian odes of Pindar as a group, investigating the ways in which they interact and exploit their overlapping and intersecting audiences. It studies the different performances of Pindar's odes (including reperformances subsequent to the first performance) and the audiences of these performances, and argues that these have important consequences for our view of the role victory odes played in the self-display of the Sicilian tyrannies to one another and the wider Greek world, the intertexts between the odes, the 'conventional' material in Pindar and the ways in which Pindar fulfils his promise of lasting fame for his patrons.
Performances and Audiences in Pindar's Sicilian Victory Odes
Author: A. D. Morrison
Publisher: University of London Press
ISBN: 9781905670093
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
Pindar's fifteen victory odes for Sicilian victors include some of Pindar's most impressive and widely admired poems, such as the first two Olympians and first three Pythians. The majority of the Sicilian odes date from between about 476 to 466 BC and were composed to celebrate the victories of the great tyrants of Sicily Hieron of Syracuse and Theron of Akragas or their families or courtiers at the crown games. The Sicilian tyrants made spectacular use of their wealth and power in competing in equestrian events at the games and in commissioning Pindar and Bacchylides to celebrate their victories in song. This book examines the Sicilian odes of Pindar as a group, investigating the ways in which they interact and exploit their overlapping and intersecting audiences. It studies the different performances of Pindar's odes (including reperformances subsequent to the first performance) and the audiences of these performances, and argues that these have important consequences for our view of the role victory odes played in the self-display of the Sicilian tyrannies to one another and the wider Greek world, the intertexts between the odes, the 'conventional' material in Pindar and the ways in which Pindar fulfils his promise of lasting fame for his patrons.
Publisher: University of London Press
ISBN: 9781905670093
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
Pindar's fifteen victory odes for Sicilian victors include some of Pindar's most impressive and widely admired poems, such as the first two Olympians and first three Pythians. The majority of the Sicilian odes date from between about 476 to 466 BC and were composed to celebrate the victories of the great tyrants of Sicily Hieron of Syracuse and Theron of Akragas or their families or courtiers at the crown games. The Sicilian tyrants made spectacular use of their wealth and power in competing in equestrian events at the games and in commissioning Pindar and Bacchylides to celebrate their victories in song. This book examines the Sicilian odes of Pindar as a group, investigating the ways in which they interact and exploit their overlapping and intersecting audiences. It studies the different performances of Pindar's odes (including reperformances subsequent to the first performance) and the audiences of these performances, and argues that these have important consequences for our view of the role victory odes played in the self-display of the Sicilian tyrannies to one another and the wider Greek world, the intertexts between the odes, the 'conventional' material in Pindar and the ways in which Pindar fulfils his promise of lasting fame for his patrons.
Reading the Victory Ode
Author: Peter Agócs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139536389
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 445
Book Description
The victory ode was a short-lived poetic genre in the fifth century BC, but its impact has been substantial. Pindar, Bacchylides and others are now among the most widely read Greek authors precisely because of their significance for the literary development of poetry between Homer and tragedy and their historical involvement in promoting Greek rulers. Their influence was so great that it ultimately helped to define the European notion of lyric from the Renaissance onwards. This collection of essays by international experts examines the victory ode from a range of angles: its genesis and evolution, the nature of the commissioning process, the patrons, context of performance and re-performance, and the poetics of the victory ode and its exponents. From these different perspectives the contributors offer both a panoramic view of the genre and an insight into the modern research positions on this complex and fascinating subject.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139536389
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 445
Book Description
The victory ode was a short-lived poetic genre in the fifth century BC, but its impact has been substantial. Pindar, Bacchylides and others are now among the most widely read Greek authors precisely because of their significance for the literary development of poetry between Homer and tragedy and their historical involvement in promoting Greek rulers. Their influence was so great that it ultimately helped to define the European notion of lyric from the Renaissance onwards. This collection of essays by international experts examines the victory ode from a range of angles: its genesis and evolution, the nature of the commissioning process, the patrons, context of performance and re-performance, and the poetics of the victory ode and its exponents. From these different perspectives the contributors offer both a panoramic view of the genre and an insight into the modern research positions on this complex and fascinating subject.
Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar's Sicilian Odes
Author: Virginia M. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190910313
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Myth, Locality, and Identity argues that Pindar engages in a striking, innovative style of mythmaking that represents and shapes Sicilian identities in his epinician odes for Sicilian victors in the fifth century BCE. While Sicily has been thought to be lacking in local traditions for Pindar to celebrate, Lewis argues that the Sicilian odes offer examples of the formation of local traditions: the monster Typho whom Zeus defeated to become king of the gods, for example, now lives beneath Mt. Aitna; Persephone receives the island of Sicily as a gift from Zeus; and the Peloponnesian river Alpheos travels to Syracuse in pursuit of the local spring nymph Arethusa. By weaving regional and Panhellenic myth into the local landscape, as the book shows, Pindar infuses physical places with meaning and thereby contextualizes people, cities, and their rulers within a wider Greek framework. During this time period, Greek Sicily experienced a unique set of political circumstances: the inhabitants were continuously being displaced, cities were founded and resettled, and political leaders rose and fell from power in rapid succession. This book offers the first sustained analysis of myth in Pindar's odes for Sicilian victors across the island that accounts for their shared context. The nodes of myth and place that Pindar fuses in this poetry reinforce and develop a sense of place and community for citizens locally; at the same time, they raise the profile of physical sites and the cities attached to them for larger audiences across the Greek world. In addition to providing new readings of Pindaric odes and offering a model for the formation of Sicilian identities in the first half of the fifth century, the book contributes new insights into current debates on the relationship between myth and place in classical literature.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190910313
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Myth, Locality, and Identity argues that Pindar engages in a striking, innovative style of mythmaking that represents and shapes Sicilian identities in his epinician odes for Sicilian victors in the fifth century BCE. While Sicily has been thought to be lacking in local traditions for Pindar to celebrate, Lewis argues that the Sicilian odes offer examples of the formation of local traditions: the monster Typho whom Zeus defeated to become king of the gods, for example, now lives beneath Mt. Aitna; Persephone receives the island of Sicily as a gift from Zeus; and the Peloponnesian river Alpheos travels to Syracuse in pursuit of the local spring nymph Arethusa. By weaving regional and Panhellenic myth into the local landscape, as the book shows, Pindar infuses physical places with meaning and thereby contextualizes people, cities, and their rulers within a wider Greek framework. During this time period, Greek Sicily experienced a unique set of political circumstances: the inhabitants were continuously being displaced, cities were founded and resettled, and political leaders rose and fell from power in rapid succession. This book offers the first sustained analysis of myth in Pindar's odes for Sicilian victors across the island that accounts for their shared context. The nodes of myth and place that Pindar fuses in this poetry reinforce and develop a sense of place and community for citizens locally; at the same time, they raise the profile of physical sites and the cities attached to them for larger audiences across the Greek world. In addition to providing new readings of Pindaric odes and offering a model for the formation of Sicilian identities in the first half of the fifth century, the book contributes new insights into current debates on the relationship between myth and place in classical literature.
Approaches to Greek Myth
Author: Lowell Edmunds
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 1421414201
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 659
Book Description
“A handy introduction to some of the more useful methodological approaches to and the previous scholarship on the subject of Greek myths.” —Phoenix Since the first edition of Approaches to Greek Myth was published in 1990, interest in Greek mythology has surged. There was no simple agreement on the subject of “myth” in classical antiquity, and there remains none today. Is myth a narrative or a performance? Can myth be separated from its context? What did myths mean to ancient Greeks and what do they mean today? Here, Lowell Edmunds brings together practitioners of eight of the most important contemporary approaches to the subject. Whether exploring myth from a historical, comparative, or theoretical perspective, each contributor lucidly describes a particular approach, applies it to one or more myths, and reflects on what the approach yields that others do not. Edmunds’s new general and chapter-level introductions recontextualize these essays and also touch on recent developments in scholarship in the interpretation of Greek myth. Contributors are Jordi Pàmias, on the reception of Greek myth through history; H. S. Versnel, on the intersections of myth and ritual; Carolina López-Ruiz, on the near Eastern contexts; Joseph Falaky Nagy, on Indo-European structure in Greek myth; William Hansen, on myth and folklore; Claude Calame, on the application of semiotic theory of narrative; Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, on reading visual sources such as vase paintings; and Robert A. Segal, on psychoanalytic interpretations. “A valuable collection of eight essays . . . Edmunds’s book provides a convenient opportunity to grapple with the current methodologies used in the analysis of literature and myth.” —New England Classical Newsletter and Journal
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 1421414201
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 659
Book Description
“A handy introduction to some of the more useful methodological approaches to and the previous scholarship on the subject of Greek myths.” —Phoenix Since the first edition of Approaches to Greek Myth was published in 1990, interest in Greek mythology has surged. There was no simple agreement on the subject of “myth” in classical antiquity, and there remains none today. Is myth a narrative or a performance? Can myth be separated from its context? What did myths mean to ancient Greeks and what do they mean today? Here, Lowell Edmunds brings together practitioners of eight of the most important contemporary approaches to the subject. Whether exploring myth from a historical, comparative, or theoretical perspective, each contributor lucidly describes a particular approach, applies it to one or more myths, and reflects on what the approach yields that others do not. Edmunds’s new general and chapter-level introductions recontextualize these essays and also touch on recent developments in scholarship in the interpretation of Greek myth. Contributors are Jordi Pàmias, on the reception of Greek myth through history; H. S. Versnel, on the intersections of myth and ritual; Carolina López-Ruiz, on the near Eastern contexts; Joseph Falaky Nagy, on Indo-European structure in Greek myth; William Hansen, on myth and folklore; Claude Calame, on the application of semiotic theory of narrative; Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, on reading visual sources such as vase paintings; and Robert A. Segal, on psychoanalytic interpretations. “A valuable collection of eight essays . . . Edmunds’s book provides a convenient opportunity to grapple with the current methodologies used in the analysis of literature and myth.” —New England Classical Newsletter and Journal
Textual Events
Author: Felix Budelmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192528386
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
Recent decades have seen a major expansion in our understanding of how early Greek lyric functioned in its social, political, and ritual contexts, and the fundamental role song played in the day-to-day lives of communities, groups, and individuals has been the object of intense study. This volume places its focus elsewhere, and attempts to illuminate poetic effects that cannot be captured in functional terms alone. Employing a range of interpretative methods, it explores the idea of lyric performances as 'textual events'. Some chapters investigate the pragmatic relationship between real performance contexts and imaginative settings, while others consider how lyric poems position themselves in relation to earlier texts and textual traditions, or discuss the distinctive encounters lyric poems create between listeners, authors, and performers. Individual lyric texts and authors, such as Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar, are analysed in detail, alongside treatments of the relationship between lyric and the Homeric Hymns. Building on the renewed concern with the aesthetic in the study of Greek lyric and beyond, Textual Events aims to re-examine the relationship between the poems' formal features and their historical contexts. Lyric poems are a type of socio-political discourse, but they are also objects of attention in themselves. They enable reflection on social and ritual practices as much as they are embedded within them. As well as expressing cultural norms, lyric challenges listeners to think about and experience the world afresh.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192528386
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
Recent decades have seen a major expansion in our understanding of how early Greek lyric functioned in its social, political, and ritual contexts, and the fundamental role song played in the day-to-day lives of communities, groups, and individuals has been the object of intense study. This volume places its focus elsewhere, and attempts to illuminate poetic effects that cannot be captured in functional terms alone. Employing a range of interpretative methods, it explores the idea of lyric performances as 'textual events'. Some chapters investigate the pragmatic relationship between real performance contexts and imaginative settings, while others consider how lyric poems position themselves in relation to earlier texts and textual traditions, or discuss the distinctive encounters lyric poems create between listeners, authors, and performers. Individual lyric texts and authors, such as Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar, are analysed in detail, alongside treatments of the relationship between lyric and the Homeric Hymns. Building on the renewed concern with the aesthetic in the study of Greek lyric and beyond, Textual Events aims to re-examine the relationship between the poems' formal features and their historical contexts. Lyric poems are a type of socio-political discourse, but they are also objects of attention in themselves. They enable reflection on social and ritual practices as much as they are embedded within them. As well as expressing cultural norms, lyric challenges listeners to think about and experience the world afresh.
Eschatology in Antiquity
Author: Hilary Marlow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315459493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 654
Book Description
This collection of essays explores the rhetoric and practices surrounding views on life after death and the end of the world, including the fate of the individual, apocalyptic speculation and hope for cosmological renewal, in a wide range of societies from Ancient Mesopotamia to the Byzantine era. The 42 essays by leading scholars in each field explore the rich spectrum of ways in which eschatological understanding can be expressed, and for which purposes it can be used. Readers will gain new insight into the historical contexts, details, functions and impact of eschatological ideas and imagery in ancient texts and material culture from the twenty-fifth century BCE to the ninth century CE. Traditionally, the study of “eschatology” (and related concepts) has been pursued mainly by scholars of Jewish and Christian scripture. By broadening the disciplinary scope but remaining within the clearly defined geographical milieu of the Mediterranean, this volume enables its readers to note comparisons and contrasts, as well as exchanges of thought and transmission of eschatological ideas across Antiquity. Cross-referencing, high quality illustrations and extensive indexing contribute to a rich resource on a topic of contemporary interest and relevance. Eschatology in Antiquity is aimed at readers from a wide range of academic disciplines, as well as non-specialists including seminary students and religious leaders. The primary audience will comprise researchers in relevant fields including Biblical Studies, Classics and Ancient History, Ancient Philosophy, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Art History, Late Antiquity, Byzantine Studies and Cultural Studies. Care has been taken to ensure that the essays are accessible to undergraduates and those without specialist knowledge of particular subject areas.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315459493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 654
Book Description
This collection of essays explores the rhetoric and practices surrounding views on life after death and the end of the world, including the fate of the individual, apocalyptic speculation and hope for cosmological renewal, in a wide range of societies from Ancient Mesopotamia to the Byzantine era. The 42 essays by leading scholars in each field explore the rich spectrum of ways in which eschatological understanding can be expressed, and for which purposes it can be used. Readers will gain new insight into the historical contexts, details, functions and impact of eschatological ideas and imagery in ancient texts and material culture from the twenty-fifth century BCE to the ninth century CE. Traditionally, the study of “eschatology” (and related concepts) has been pursued mainly by scholars of Jewish and Christian scripture. By broadening the disciplinary scope but remaining within the clearly defined geographical milieu of the Mediterranean, this volume enables its readers to note comparisons and contrasts, as well as exchanges of thought and transmission of eschatological ideas across Antiquity. Cross-referencing, high quality illustrations and extensive indexing contribute to a rich resource on a topic of contemporary interest and relevance. Eschatology in Antiquity is aimed at readers from a wide range of academic disciplines, as well as non-specialists including seminary students and religious leaders. The primary audience will comprise researchers in relevant fields including Biblical Studies, Classics and Ancient History, Ancient Philosophy, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Art History, Late Antiquity, Byzantine Studies and Cultural Studies. Care has been taken to ensure that the essays are accessible to undergraduates and those without specialist knowledge of particular subject areas.
A Cultural History of Tragedy in Antiquity
Author: Emily Wilson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350154881
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic life of ancient Athens and its performances across the Greek-speaking world, to its new and very different instantiations in Republican and Imperial Roman contexts. Lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the shifting dramatic forms, performance environments, and social meanings of tragedy as it was repeatedly reinvented. Tragedy was consistently seen as the most serious of all dramatic genres; these essays trace a sequence of different visions of what the most serious kind of dramatic story might be, and the most appropriate ways of telling those stories on stage. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual, and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350154881
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic life of ancient Athens and its performances across the Greek-speaking world, to its new and very different instantiations in Republican and Imperial Roman contexts. Lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the shifting dramatic forms, performance environments, and social meanings of tragedy as it was repeatedly reinvented. Tragedy was consistently seen as the most serious of all dramatic genres; these essays trace a sequence of different visions of what the most serious kind of dramatic story might be, and the most appropriate ways of telling those stories on stage. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual, and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.
Defining Greek Narrative
Author: Douglas Cairns
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 074868011X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
An examination of what is distinct, what is shared and what is universal in Greek narrative traditions of a wide range of ancient Greek literary genres.
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 074868011X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
An examination of what is distinct, what is shared and what is universal in Greek narrative traditions of a wide range of ancient Greek literary genres.
Pindar, Song, and Space
Author: Richard Neer
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421429799
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 475
Book Description
A groundbreaking study of the interaction of poetry, performance, and the built environment in ancient Greece. Winner of the PROSE Award for Best Book in Classics by the Association of American Publishers In this volume, Richard Neer and Leslie Kurke develop a new, integrated approach to classical Greece: a "lyric archaeology" that combines literary and art-historical analysis with archaeological and epigraphic materials. At the heart of the book is the great poet Pindar of Thebes, best known for his magnificent odes in honor of victors at the Olympic Games and other competitions. Unlike the quintessentially personal genre of modern lyric, these poems were destined for public performance by choruses of dancing men. Neer and Kurke go further to show that they were also site-specific: as the dancers moved through the space of a city or a sanctuary, their song would refer to local monuments and landmarks. Part of Pindar's brief, they argue, was to weave words and bodies into elaborate tapestries of myth and geography and, in so doing, to re-imagine the very fabric of the city-state. Pindar's poems, in short, were tools for making sense of space. Recent scholarship has tended to isolate poetry, art, and archaeology. But Neer and Kurke show that these distinctions are artificial. Poems, statues, bronzes, tombs, boundary stones, roadways, beacons, and buildings worked together as a "suite" of technologies for organizing landscapes, cityscapes, and territories. Studying these technologies in tandem reveals the procedures and criteria by which the Greeks understood relations of nearness and distance, "here" and "there"—and how these ways of inhabiting space were essentially political. Rooted in close readings of individual poems, buildings, and works of art, Pindar, Song, and Space ranges from Athens to Libya, Sicily to Rhodes, to provide a revelatory new understanding of the world the Greeks built—and a new model for studying the ancient world.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421429799
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 475
Book Description
A groundbreaking study of the interaction of poetry, performance, and the built environment in ancient Greece. Winner of the PROSE Award for Best Book in Classics by the Association of American Publishers In this volume, Richard Neer and Leslie Kurke develop a new, integrated approach to classical Greece: a "lyric archaeology" that combines literary and art-historical analysis with archaeological and epigraphic materials. At the heart of the book is the great poet Pindar of Thebes, best known for his magnificent odes in honor of victors at the Olympic Games and other competitions. Unlike the quintessentially personal genre of modern lyric, these poems were destined for public performance by choruses of dancing men. Neer and Kurke go further to show that they were also site-specific: as the dancers moved through the space of a city or a sanctuary, their song would refer to local monuments and landmarks. Part of Pindar's brief, they argue, was to weave words and bodies into elaborate tapestries of myth and geography and, in so doing, to re-imagine the very fabric of the city-state. Pindar's poems, in short, were tools for making sense of space. Recent scholarship has tended to isolate poetry, art, and archaeology. But Neer and Kurke show that these distinctions are artificial. Poems, statues, bronzes, tombs, boundary stones, roadways, beacons, and buildings worked together as a "suite" of technologies for organizing landscapes, cityscapes, and territories. Studying these technologies in tandem reveals the procedures and criteria by which the Greeks understood relations of nearness and distance, "here" and "there"—and how these ways of inhabiting space were essentially political. Rooted in close readings of individual poems, buildings, and works of art, Pindar, Song, and Space ranges from Athens to Libya, Sicily to Rhodes, to provide a revelatory new understanding of the world the Greeks built—and a new model for studying the ancient world.
Theatrical Reenactment in Pindar and Aeschylus
Author: Anna Uhlig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108481833
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
Argues that the songs of Pindar and Aeschylus share a "theatrical" spirit that illuminates choral performance in Classical Greece.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108481833
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
Argues that the songs of Pindar and Aeschylus share a "theatrical" spirit that illuminates choral performance in Classical Greece.