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Can You Feel It? Ekphrasis and Mind-Reading in Hellenistic Epigram

  • Jacqueline Klooster
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The Poetics of Greek Ekphrasis
This chapter is in the book The Poetics of Greek Ekphrasis

Abstract

Can we apply the embodied theory of language to the reading of epigrams? In this chapter this is the leading question. After a brief overview of ekphrasis in epigrams, I explain enactive language theory in relation to ekphrasis in classical Greek texts. I go on to illustrate the principle of mind-reading from bodily cues in a case study of two related epigrams, one by Asclepiades (AP 12.135) and one by Callimachus (AP 12.134), which both comment on the physical state of a fellow symposiast, concluding he must be hiding feelings of love. I then apply the same principle to another pair of ekphrastic epigrams, which both describe a statue of the archaic poet Anacreon (AP 9.599, Theocritus and APl 306, Leonidas of Tarentum). I conclude by showing the relation of mind-reading from bodily stances in the two sets of epigrams: the epigram by Leonidas shows his ability to express in poetry ‘what it’s like’ to feel like Anacreon, by describing a statue that was presumably based on Anacreon’s own poetry.

Abstract

Can we apply the embodied theory of language to the reading of epigrams? In this chapter this is the leading question. After a brief overview of ekphrasis in epigrams, I explain enactive language theory in relation to ekphrasis in classical Greek texts. I go on to illustrate the principle of mind-reading from bodily cues in a case study of two related epigrams, one by Asclepiades (AP 12.135) and one by Callimachus (AP 12.134), which both comment on the physical state of a fellow symposiast, concluding he must be hiding feelings of love. I then apply the same principle to another pair of ekphrastic epigrams, which both describe a statue of the archaic poet Anacreon (AP 9.599, Theocritus and APl 306, Leonidas of Tarentum). I conclude by showing the relation of mind-reading from bodily stances in the two sets of epigrams: the epigram by Leonidas shows his ability to express in poetry ‘what it’s like’ to feel like Anacreon, by describing a statue that was presumably based on Anacreon’s own poetry.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Foreword V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of Figures IX
  5. List of Abbreviations
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I: Ekphrasis and Hellenistic Poetics
  8. Poets’ Signatures and Ekphrasis in Inscribed Greek Epigrams 15
  9. Leonidas of Tarentum and Hellenistic Ekphrasis 45
  10. Pictures in Motion: Descriptive Performance in Hellenistic carmina figurata 69
  11. Aratus’ Ekphrastic Skies: Between the Dragon and the Stars Without Name 89
  12. Part II: Ekphrastic Visualization In and Out of the Mind
  13. The Lover is the Perfect Artist: Praxiteles and the Cnidian Aphrodite in Greek Ekphrastic Epigram 117
  14. Imagined Spaces, Imagined Buildings, and the Idea of Architectural Representation: Phantasia in the Wall Paintings of the 2nd Style in Rome and the Vesuvian Cities 141
  15. A Library of Memory in a Ptolemaic Reading Primer (P. Cairo J.E. 65445) 193
  16. Learning from Illusion: Myron’s Heifer and the Stoic Poetics of Ekphrasis 217
  17. Can You Feel It? Ekphrasis and Mind-Reading in Hellenistic Epigram 255
  18. Part III: Developments in Late Antique Ekphrasis
  19. Patchwork Voices: Poetics and Aesthetics of Ekphrasis in Ancient Greek Cento-Poetry 275
  20. Exegete or Ecstatic Visionary? On the Self-Fashioning of the Poet in the Ekphrasis tabulae mundi of John of Gaza 289
  21. Ekphrastic poikilia in Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy: Towards a Late Antique Poetics of Similarity 313
  22. A Guided Tour through a Poetic Collection of Statues: Observations on Christodorus of Coptus’ Ekphrastic Practice 339
  23. List of Contributors 361
  24. Index Nominum
  25. Index Rerum
  26. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112207697-010

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Foreword V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of Figures IX
  5. List of Abbreviations
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I: Ekphrasis and Hellenistic Poetics
  8. Poets’ Signatures and Ekphrasis in Inscribed Greek Epigrams 15
  9. Leonidas of Tarentum and Hellenistic Ekphrasis 45
  10. Pictures in Motion: Descriptive Performance in Hellenistic carmina figurata 69
  11. Aratus’ Ekphrastic Skies: Between the Dragon and the Stars Without Name 89
  12. Part II: Ekphrastic Visualization In and Out of the Mind
  13. The Lover is the Perfect Artist: Praxiteles and the Cnidian Aphrodite in Greek Ekphrastic Epigram 117
  14. Imagined Spaces, Imagined Buildings, and the Idea of Architectural Representation: Phantasia in the Wall Paintings of the 2nd Style in Rome and the Vesuvian Cities 141
  15. A Library of Memory in a Ptolemaic Reading Primer (P. Cairo J.E. 65445) 193
  16. Learning from Illusion: Myron’s Heifer and the Stoic Poetics of Ekphrasis 217
  17. Can You Feel It? Ekphrasis and Mind-Reading in Hellenistic Epigram 255
  18. Part III: Developments in Late Antique Ekphrasis
  19. Patchwork Voices: Poetics and Aesthetics of Ekphrasis in Ancient Greek Cento-Poetry 275
  20. Exegete or Ecstatic Visionary? On the Self-Fashioning of the Poet in the Ekphrasis tabulae mundi of John of Gaza 289
  21. Ekphrastic poikilia in Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy: Towards a Late Antique Poetics of Similarity 313
  22. A Guided Tour through a Poetic Collection of Statues: Observations on Christodorus of Coptus’ Ekphrastic Practice 339
  23. List of Contributors 361
  24. Index Nominum
  25. Index Rerum
  26. Index Locorum
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