MythosEikonPoiesis

Nella filosofia di Platone l’immagine gioca un ruolo centrale: per la prima volta lo statuto proprio dell’iconico viene indagato filosoficamente mentre l’immagine diviene una metafora per comprendere e interpretare la realtà. Il libro esamina la relazione tra idee e realtà sensibile attraverso il prisma dell’analogia iconica, il concetto di paradigma e la funzione del medium nella cosmologia platonica.

Für die Fragmente der frühgriechischen Lyrik (7./6. Jh. v. Chr.) - lange Zeit nur ‚Wartetexte‘ - haben in den letzten Jahren neue Papyri, Kommentare und Interpretationen, die ästhetische und performative Aspekte berücksichtigen, die Diskussion wieder entfacht. Neues und neu bewertetes Material aus Archäologie und Ikonographie liegt bereit. Doch fehlt eine Untersuchung, die diese Ergebnisse verbindet und in einen größeren strukturellen Zusammenhang bringt. Dies soll hier erfolgen.

Die Polis erweist sich dabei als tragende Struktur durch die Handelswege, in die sie eingebunden ist, wie in den kultisch-religiösen Festen als den Aufführungskontexten für Lieder und Tänze. Dieser Kontext wird erstmals Polis für Polis mit Hilfe literarischer, epigraphischer und archäologischer Quellen rekonstruiert. Neu wird der Bildkontext systematisch untersucht. Erstmals werden auch literaturgeschichtliche Testimonien ausgewertet. Diese Kontextualisierung erfordert eine Neuinterpretation zahlreicher Fragmente, aus der eine neue Geschichte der frühgriechischen Lyrik erwächst, die nicht nur für die Klassische Philologie, Archäologie und Alte Geschichte, sondern grundsätzlich auch für die Kultur- und Medienwissenschaften bedeutsam ist.

Plato’s Timaeus is unique in Greek Antiquity for presenting the creation of the world as the work of a divine demiurge. The maker bestows order on sensible things and imitates the world of the intellect by using the Forms as models. While the creation-myth of the Timaeus seems unparalleled, this book argues that it is not the first of Plato’s dialogues to use artistic language to articulate the relationship of the objects of the material world to the world of the intellect.

The book adopts an interpretative angle that is sensitive to the visual and art-historical developments of Classical Athens to argue that sculpture, revolutionized by the advent of the lost-wax technique for the production of bronze statues, lies at the heart of Plato’s conception of the relation of the human soul and body to the Forms. It shows that, despite the severe criticism of mimēsis in the Republic, Plato’s use of artistic language rests on a positive model of mimēsis.

Plato was in fact engaged in a constructive dialogue with material culture and he found in the technical processes and the cultural semantics of sculpture and of the art of weaving a valuable way to conceptualise and communicate complex ideas about humans’ relation to the Forms.

Intertextuality is a well-known tool in literary criticism and has been widely applied to ancient literature, with, perhaps surprisingly, classical scholarship being at the frontline in developing new theoretical approaches. By contrast, the seemingly parallel notion of intervisuality has only recently begun to appear in classical studies. In fact, intervisuality still lacks a clear definition and scope. Unlike intertextuality, which is consistently used with reference to the interrelationship between texts, the term ‘intervisuality’ is used not only to trace the interrelationship between images in the visual domain, but also to explore the complex interplay between the visual and the verbal. It is precisely this hybridity that interests us. Intervisuality has proved extremely productive in fields such as art history and visual culture studies. By bringing together a diverse team of scholars, this project aims to bring intervisuality into sharper focus and turn it into a powerful tool to explore the research field traditionally referred to as ‘Greek literature’.

La presenza di ripetizioni è una caratteristica formale tipica dei poemi omerici e di una poesia che, prima di giungere a una redazione scritta, è stata per secoli composta e trasmessa oralmente. Questo studio si interessa a una particolare categoria di ripetizioni: quelle pronunciate dagli ἄγγελοι, intermediari della comunicazione a distanza in un universo narrativo caratterizzato a sua volta dalla trasmissione orale dell’informazione. La presentazione estensiva, in forma diretta, sia del discorso del mandante del messaggio sia di quello dell’ἄγγελος (messaggero umano o divino, araldo o ambasciatore), consentono di apprezzare la tecnica discorsiva di quest’ultimo, tesa tra ripetizione esatta (verbatim) e riformulazione. Tale tecnica può essere letta in chiave metapoetica e impiegata come punto di partenza per indagare, da un lato, i meccanismi compositivi che stanno alla base della poesia omerica, dall’altro la rappresentazione delle relazioni tra mondo divino e mondo umano. Principalmente focalizzato sull’Iliade, lo studio si interessa anche all’Odissea, rilevando e spiegando le differenze esistenti tra i due poemi quanto alla mise en scène narrativa della comunicazione a distanza.

Il libro tratta di una categoria di ripetizioni presente nell’epica omerica, in particolare nell’Iliade: quelle pronunciate dagli ἄγγελοι, intermediari della comunicazione a distanza (messaggeri, araldi, ambasciatori) in un universo narrativo caratterizzato dalla trasmissione orale dell’informazione. Lo studio di tali ripetizioni consente di esplorare, sotto nuova luce, lo scenario performativo, culturale e religioso dei poemi omerici.

The fluidity of myth and history in antiquity and the ensuing rapidity with which these notions infiltrated and cross-fertilized one another has repeatedly attracted the scholarly interest. The understanding of myth as a phenomenon imbued with social and historical nuances allows for more than one methodological approaches. Within the wider context of interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, the present volume returns to origins, as it traces and registers the association and interaction between myth and history in various literary genres in Greek and Roman antiquity (i.e. an era when the scientific definitions of and distinctions between myth and history had not yet been perceived as such, let alone fully shaped and implemented), providing original ideas, new interpretations and (re)evaluations of key texts and less well-known passages, close readings, and catholic overviews. The twenty-four chapters of this volume expand from Greek epos to lyric poetry, historiography, dramatic poetry and even beyond, to genres of Roman era and late antiquity. It is the editors’ hope that this volume will appeal to students and academic researchers in the areas of classics, social and political history, archaeology, and even social anthropology.

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.

The origins of satyr drama, and particularly the reliability of the account in Aristotle, remains contested, and several of this volume’s contributions try to make sense of the early relationship of satyr drama to dithyramb and attempt to place satyr drama in the pre-Classical performance space and traditions. What is not contested is the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy as a required cap to the Attic trilogy. Here, however, how Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (to whom one complete play and the preponderance of the surviving fragments belong) envisioned the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy in plot, structure, setting, stage action and language is a complex subject tackled by several contributors. The playful satyr chorus and the drunken senility of Silenos have always suggested some links to comedy and later to Atellan farce and phlyax. Those links are best examined through language, passages in later Greek and Roman writers, and in art. The purpose of this volume is probe as many themes and connections of satyr drama with other literary genres, as well as other art forms, putting satyr drama on stage from the sixth century BC through the second century AD. The editors and contributors suggest solutions to some of the controversies, but the volume shows as much that the field of study is vibrant and deserves fuller attention.

The aim of this book is to explore the definition(s) of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ that scholars use when studying the ancient Greek world. Although in modern languages their meaning is mostly straightforward, both concepts become problematical when applied to ancient reality. In fact, ‘theatre’ as well as ‘metatheatre’ are used in many different, sometimes even contradictory, ways by modern scholars.
Through a series of papers examining questions related to ancient Greek theatre and dramatic performances of various genres the use of those two terms is problematized and put into question.
Must ancient Greek theatre be reduced to what was performed in proper theatre-buildings? And is everything was performed within such buildings to be considered as ‘theatre’? How does the definition of what is considered as theatre evolve from one period to the other?
As for ‘metatheatre’, the discussion revolves around the interaction between reality and fiction in dramatic pieces of all genres. The various definitions of ‘metatheatre’ are also explored and explicited by the papers gathered in this volume, as well as the question of the distinction between paratheatre (understood as paratragedy/comedy) and metatheatre.
Readers will be encouraged by the diversity of approaches presented in this book to re-think their own understanding and use of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ when examining ancient Greek reality.

From Homer to Sophocles and Greek Middle Comedy, and from Plato and Protagoras to Ovid, this volume features a panoramic and cross-generic overview of the diverse handling and ad hoc elaboration of the overarching literary notions of "time" and "space". The twenty-one contributions of this volume written by an international group of esteemed scholars provide an equal number of hermeneutic approaches to individual, distinct aspects of Greek and Latin literature. The volume is purposely designed not as a linear display of knowledge, but rather as an anthology of select paradigms that aim to demonstrate the multidimensional function and multifaceted role of the twin notions of "time" and "space" throughout ancient Greek and Latin literary texts. The volume opens with analyses of conspicuous cases from epic poetry, proceeds with examples from drama (tragedy and comedy), and concludes with diverse instances of chronotopes (empirical, imaginary, and even shifting ones), in various literary genres.

The volume is of greatest relevance since it meets the cultural and theoretical trends of today’s Classics. It therefore will attract not only the interest of specialised Classicists but it is also intended for a wider general readership.

Man ist sich heute einig: Die Musen sind weibliche griechische Gottheiten, die mit der Kunst und der Inspiration verbunden sind. Ihre Bedeutung in der archaischen Dichtung ist anerkannte Tatsache. Man ist jedoch hilflos, wenn es darum geht, sie präziser zu fassen und ihr Wirken verständlich zu machen. Als göttliche Personifizierungen der mysteriösen Kunst-Mächte lassen sie sich nur schwer in die Begriffe und Kategorien unseres modernen Verstandes umsetzen. Durch die konsequente Berücksichtigung des Kontextes, Autor für Autor, der vielfältigen Epitheta, der Besonderheiten und spezifischen Handlungen der Musen in epischen und lyrischen Versen des archaischen Griechenlands versucht das Buch, welches die erste vollständige Monographie über die Kunstgöttinnen darstellt, Licht in das Dunkel zu bringen. Die Analyse der 295 'musischen' Stellen eröffnet nicht nur eine ganze Reihe neuer Einzeleinsichten, sondern bietet zugleich einen umfassenden Überblick über das reichhaltige und erstaunlich kohärente Phänomen der musischen Inspiration am Anfang unserer Kultur.

L'ouvrage propose un parcours inédit à travers l’ensemble des vers épiques et lyriques faisant mention des Muses en Grèce archaïque. Les observations contextuelles, auteur après auteur, des multiples épithètes, spécificités et actions des divinités inspiratrices offre une vue nouvelle, plus riche et plus parlante que nulle autre du mystérieux phénomène musical.

This book is about the bold, beautiful, and faithful heroines of the Greek novels and their mythical models, such as Iphigenia, Phaedra, Penelope, and Helen. The novels manipulate readerly expectations through a complex web of mythical variants and constantly negotiate their adventure and erotic plot with that of traditional myths becoming, thus, part of the imperial mythical revision to which they add the prospect of a happy ending.

Not a few of the more prominent and persistent controversies among classical scholars about approaches and methods arise from a failure to appreciate the fundamental role of time in structuring the interpretation of Greek culture. Diachrony showcases the corresponding importance of diachronic models for the study of ancient Greek literature and culture. Diachronic models of culture reach beyond mere historical change to the systemically evolving dynamics of cultural institutions, practices, and artifacts. The papers collected here illustrate the construction and proper use of such models. They emphasize the complementarity of synchronic and diachronic perspectives and highlight the need to assess how well diachronic models fit history. The contributors to this volume strive to be methodologically explicit as they tackle a wide range of subjects with a variety of diachronic approaches. Their work shows both the difficulty and the promise of diachronic analysis. Our incomplete knowledge of Greek antiquity throughout time and the Greeks' own preoccupation with the past in the construction of their present make diachronic analysis not just invaluable but indispensable for the study of ancient Greek literature and culture.

Representation of myth in the novel, as a poetic, narrative and aesthetic device, is one of the most illuminating issues in the area of ancient religion, for such narratives investigate in various ways fundamental problems that concern all human beings. This volume brings together twenty contributions (six of them to a Roundtable organized by Anton Bierl on myth), originally presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient novel (ICAN IV) held in Lisbon in July 2008. Employing an interdisciplinary approach and putting together different methodological tools (intertextual, psychological, and anthropological), each offers a illuminating investigation of mythical discourse as presented in the text or texts under discussion. The collection as a whole demonstrates the exemplary and transgressive significance of myth and its metaphorical meaning in a genre that to some extent can be considered a modernized and secular form of myth that focuses on the quintessential question of love.

This book contributes to the understanding of Dionysos, the Greek god of wine, dancing, theatre and ecstasy, by putting together 30 studies of classical scholars. They combine the analysis of specific instances of particular dimensions of the god in cult, myth, literature and iconography, with general visions of Dionysos in antiquity and modern times. Only from the combination of different perspectives can we grasp the complex personality of Dionysos, and the forms of his presence in different cults, literary genres, and artistic forms, from Mycenaean times to late antiquity.

The ways in which Dionysos was experienced may vary in each author, each cult, and each genre in which this god is involved. Therefore, instead of offering a new all-encompassing theory that would immediately become partial, the book narrows the focus on specific aspects of the god. Redefinition does not mean finding (again) the essence of the god, but obtaining a more nuanced knowledge of the ways he was experienced and conceived in antiquity.

This book offers the first attempt at understanding interpersonal violence in ancient Athens. While the archaic desire for revenge persisted into the classical period, it was channeled by the civil discourse of the democracy. Forensic speeches, curse tablets, and comedy display a remarkable openness regarding the definition of violence. But in daily life, Athenians had to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They did so by enacting a discourse on violence in the performance of these genres, during which complex negotiations about the legitimacy of violence took place. Performances such as the staging of trials and comedies ritually defined the meaning of violence and its appropriate application. Speeches and curse tablets not only spoke about violence, but also exacted it in a mediated form, deriving its legitimate use from a democratic principle, the communal decision of the human jurors in the first case and the underworld gods in the second. Since discourse and reality were intertwined and the discourse was ritualized, actual violence might also have been partly ritualized. By still respecting the on-going desire to harm one’s enemy, this partial ritualization of violence helped restrain violence and thus contributed to Athens’ relative stability.

Herodots Historie ist das erste erhaltene Geschichtswerk Europas. Immer wieder aber wurde der Autor auch kritisiert; so prägt Cicero zwar den Terminus „Vater der Geschichtschreibung“, bemängelt aber zugleich die Fiktionalität in dessen Werk. In der Tat ist gerade das mythische Geschichtenerzählen ein Hauptcharakteristikum bei Herodot und die Durchmischung fiktionaler Tradition und rationalistischer Innovation hat auch moderne Leser bisweilen irritiert.
Diese „Mythisierung“ historischer Geschehnisse resultiert jedoch nicht aus naiver Anekdotenfreude. Vielmehr wird eine Interpretation der historischen Ereignisse erst durch den assoziativen Gehalt möglich, den die mythische Folie innerhalb der griechischen Erzähltradition mit sich bringt. Es wäre zu einfach, Herodots Verwendung mythischer Folien als bewusste auktoriale Intention zu deuten. Somit ist auch die hier geleistete Rekonstruktion eines mythisch-rituellen Bezugsfelds ein notwendiger Bestandteil zum Verständnis Herodots, der weniger als „Vater der Geschichtsschreibung“ denn als Erbe einer Geschichtentradition erscheint.

Die Beiträge des Autorenkolloquiums am Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung der Universität Bielefeld (Nov. 2007) setzen sich intensiv mit Walter Burkert und seinem Werk auseinander. Der international hoch angesehene Gräzist hat in seinen Epoche machenden Studien, die um die Ursprünge menschlichen Zusammenlebens in Riten, um Opfer, Schuld und grausame Todesszenarien kreisen, Fragestellungen der biologischen Verhaltensforschung aufgenommen und über die Altertums- und Religionswissenschaften hinaus eine große intellektuelle Wirkung entfaltet.

Die in der Erforschung und Interpretation antiker Texte lange aufrechterhaltene Trennung von Religion und Literatur in zwei nicht interdependente Sphären ist anachronistisch. Im Falle des griechischen Dramas, untrennbar gebunden an den athenischen Dionysoskult, hat sich die Erkenntnis einer strukturellen Prägung durch den Mythos und das Ritual zwar durchgesetzt, doch bleibt es ein Desiderat, das Interpretationsmodell auf andere Gattungen der griechischen Literatur (Epos, Lyrik, vorsokratisches Lehrgedicht, Geschichtsschreibung, platonischer Dialog, hellenistische Dichtung und Roman) sowie auf vorausgegangene und nachfolgende Schriftkulturen zu übertragen. Auf eine ihrem Schrifttum zugrundeliegende mythisch-rituelle Poetik befragt werden daher die frühen Zivilisationen des Vorderen Orients und Ägyptens ebenso wie die griechisch-römische Mittelmeerkultur unter Roms Vorherrschaft. Die Fragestellung wird zudem ausgeweitet auf Byzanz und die europäischen Tragiker der Moderne. Das zweibändige Werk umfasst die wesentlich erweiterten Beiträge zur Tagung Literatur und Religion: die Griechen, vorher, nachher und heute. Mythisch-rituelle Strukturen im Text (Castelen-Augst bei Basel, 16.-20.03.2005) und zwei zusätzliche Aufsätze. Zugleich bilden die beiden Volumina den Auftakt der neuen Basler altertumswissenschaftlichen Reihe MythosEikonPoiesis.

Die in der Erforschung und Interpretation antiker Texte lange aufrechterhaltene Trennung von Religion und Literatur in zwei nicht interdependente Sphären ist anachronistisch. Im Falle des griechischen Dramas, untrennbar gebunden an den athenischen Dionysoskult, hat sich die Erkenntnis einer strukturellen Prägung durch den Mythos und das Ritual zwar durchgesetzt, doch bleibt es ein Desiderat, das Interpretationsmodell auf andere Gattungen der griechischen Literatur (Epos, Lyrik, vorsokratisches Lehrgedicht, Geschichtsschreibung, platonischer Dialog, hellenistische Dichtung und Roman) sowie auf vorausgegangene und nachfolgende Schriftkulturen zu übertragen. Auf eine ihrem Schrifttum zugrundeliegende mythisch-rituelle Poetik befragt werden daher die frühen Zivilisationen des Vorderen Orients und Ägyptens ebenso wie die griechisch-römische Mittelmeerkultur unter Roms Vorherrschaft. Die Fragestellung wird zudem ausgeweitet auf Byzanz und die europäischen Tragiker der Moderne. Das zweibändige Werk umfasst die wesentlich erweiterten Beiträge zur Tagung Literatur und Religion: die Griechen, vorher, nachher und heute. Mythisch-rituelle Strukturen im Text (Castelen-Augst bei Basel, 16.-20.03.2005) und zwei zusätzliche Aufsätze. Zugleich bilden die beiden Volumina den Auftakt der neuen Basler altertumswissenschaftlichen Reihe MythosEikonPoiesis.