Author: Charles Segal Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400853109 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
Combining historical and philological method with contemporary literary analysis, this study of Pindar's longest and most elaborate victory ode, the Fourth Pythian, traces the underlying mythical patterns, implicit poetics, and processes of mythopoesis that animate his poetry. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Virginia M. Lewis Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190910321 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 240
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.
Author: David Fearn Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192506498 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
Pindar's Eyes is a ground-breaking interdisciplinary exploration of the interactions between Greek lyric poetry and visual and material culture in the early fifth century BCE. Its aim is to open up analysis of lyric to the wider theme of aesthetic experience in early classical Greece, with particular focus on the poetic mechanisms through which Pindar's victory odes use visual and material culture to engage their audiences. Complete readings of Nemean 5, Nemean 8, and Pythian 1 reveal the poet's deep interest in the relations between lyric poetry and commemorative and religious sculpture, as well as other significant visual phenomena, while literary studies of his evocation of cultural attitudes through elaborate use of the lyric first person are combined with art-historical treatments of ecphrasis, of image and text, and of art's framing of ritual experience in ancient Greece. This specific aesthetic approach is expanded through fresh treatments of Simonides' and Bacchylides' own engagements with material culture, as well as an account of Pindaric themes in the Aeginetan logoi of Herodotus' Histories. These come together to offer not just a novel perspective on the relationship between art and text in Pindaric poetry, but to give rise to new claims about the nature of classical Greek visuality and ritual subjectivity, and to foster a richer understanding of the ways in which classical poetry and art shaped the lives and experiences of their consumers.
Author: Claude Calame Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691114587 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 199
Book Description
Surely the ancient Greeks would have been baffled to see what we consider their "mythology." Here, Claude Calame mounts a powerful critique of modern-day misconceptions on this front and the lax methodology that has allowed them to prevail. He argues that the Greeks viewed their abundance of narratives not as a single mythology but as an "archaeology." They speculated symbolically on key historical events so that a community of believing citizens could access them efficiently, through ritual means. Central to the book is Calame's rigorous and fruitful analysis of various accounts of the foundation of that most "mythical" of the Greek colonies--Cyrene, in eastern Libya. Calame opens with a magisterial historical survey demonstrating today's misapplication of the terms "myth" and "mythology." Next, he examines the Greeks' symbolic discourse to show that these modern concepts arose much later than commonly believed. Having established this interpretive framework, Calame undertakes a comparative analysis of six accounts of Cyrene's foundation: three by Pindar and one each by Herodotus (in two different versions), Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. We see how the underlying narrative was shaped in each into a poetically sophisticated, distinctive form by the respective medium, a particular poetical genre, and the specific socio-historical circumstances. Calame concludes by arguing in favor of the Greeks' symbolic approach to the past and by examining the relation of mythos to poetry and music.
Author: Zsolt Adorjani Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004277390 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 408
Book Description
Pindar’s Sixth Olympian Ode is considered one of the poet’s most brilliant victory odes. This is the first full-scale commentary on it. Adorjáni presents Greek text with critical apparatus, translation and metrical analysis. Three introductory chapters treat matters of history (background, date, performance) and literary criticism. Then follows a verse-by-verse commentary rooted in the tradition of philological exegesis, concentrating on grammatical, stylistic and interpretive features. Until now the Sixth Olympian has been praised chiefly for its magnificent and lucid presentation of the myth of Iamos, a seer of Arcadian origin and ancestor of the prophetic clan of the Iamidae. This commentary illuminates both the overwhelming depth of thought and the cunningly wrought structure of this masterpiece, contributing to a better understanding of Pindar’s verbal artistry. Pindars sechste olympische Ode ist einer der glänzendsten Siegesgesänge des Dichters. Hier wird der erste umfassende philologische Kommentar zum Gedicht vorgelegt. Adorjáni bietet einen griechischen Text mit kritischem Apparat, Übersetzung, metrischer Analyse und drei Einleitungskapiteln, die in die Probleme der Geschichtlichkeit (Hintergrund, Entstehungszeit, Aufführung) und der literarischen Interpretation hineinführen. Auf diesen Teil folgt ein von Vers zu Vers fortschreitender Kommentar, der gemäß den alten Traditionen der Texterklärung auf grammatische, stilistische und interpretatorische Fragen eingeht. Bisher wurde Olympie 6 zumeist als großartige und suggestive Erzählung des Mythos des Sehers Iamos, des Vorfahren der olympischen Iamiden, gewürdigt. Diesem Kommentar ist daran gelegen, die intrikate Gedankentiefe und vollkommenste Formkunst dieses Meisterwerks vor Augen zu führen.
Author: Martin M. Winkler Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198029780 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 361
Book Description
Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema is a collection of essays presenting a variety of approaches to films set in ancient Greece and Rome and to films that reflect archetypal features of classical literature. The diversity of content and theoretical stances found in this volume will make it required reading for scholars and students interested in interdisciplinary approaches to text and image, and for anyone interested in the presence of Greece and Rome in modern popular culture.
Author: Pfeijffer Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004351248 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 735
Book Description
A study of three epinicia of Pindar, which have in common that they celebrate victories of Aeginetan athletes and that they respond to the contemporary political situation in Aegina and to circumstances of the victory. The primary objective of this book is to provide an interpretation of each of the three odes as meaningful, coherent works of the literary art. For each ode, it provides a commentary in which problems of text and interpretation are discussed in detail, a structural and metrical analysis, and an interpretative essay, in which the observations of detail are brought together in order to provide an answer to the question as to how the ode at hand could have functioned as a coherent, meaningful epinicion. The introduction addresses questions of method and provides a description of Pindar's style.
Author: James Bradley Wells Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674036277 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
Wells argues that the victory song is a traditional art form that appealed to a popular audience and served exclusive elite interests through the inclusive appeal of entertainment, popular instruction, and laughter. Wells offers a new take on old Pindaric questions: genre, unity of the victory song, tradition, and epinician performance.
Author: Charles Segal
Author: Virginia M. Lewis
Author: David Fearn
Author: Lowell Edmunds
Author: Claude Calame
Author: Zsolt Adorjani
Author: Martin M. Winkler
Author: Anna Uhlig
Author: Pfeijffer
Author: James Bradley Wells