Cultural poetics in archaic Greece : cult, performance, politics / edited by Carol Dougherty, Leslie Kurke.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Dougherty, Carol.

Kurke, Leslie.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Greece--Civilization--To 146 B.C--Congresses.

Greece.

Civilization.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

xvi, 266 pages : illustrations, maps ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1998.

Summary:

This volume brings together essays by archaeologists, historians, and literary scholars in a comprehensive examination of the Greek archaic age. A time of dramatic and revolutionary change when many of the institutions and thought patterns that would shape Greek culture evolved, this period has become the object of renewed scholarly interest in recent years. Yet it has resisted reconstruction, largely because its documentation is less complete than that of the classical period. In order to "read the text" of archaic Greece, the contributors here apply new methods -- including anthropology, literary theory, and cultural history -- to central issues, among them the interpretation of ritual, the origins of hero cult and its relation to politics, the evolving ideologies of colonization and athletic victory, the representation of statesmen and sages, and the serendipitous development of democracy. With their interdisciplinary approaches, the various essays demonstrate the interdependence of politics, religion, and economics in this period; the importance of public performance for negotiating social interaction; and the creative use of the past to structure a changing present. Cultural Poetics in Ancient Greece offers a vigorous and coherent response to the scholarly challenges of the archaic period.

Contents:

Introduction / Carol Dougherty and Leslie Kurke

Poetics of power : the interpretation of ritual action in Archaic Greece / Ian Morris

The archaeology of ancestors / Carla Antonaccio

Divine selection : epiphany and politics in Archaic Greece / Rebecca H. Sinos

Hipparchos and the rhapsodes / H. A. Shapiro

The seven sages as performers of wisdom / Richard P. Martin

The economy of kudos / Leslie Kurke

Hero cult and politics in Herodotus : the bones of Orestes / Deborah Boedeker

It's murder to found a colony / Carol Dougherty

Thucydides' Solonian reflections / Andrew Szegedy-Maszak

The Athenian revolution of 508/7 B.C.E. : violence, authority, and the origins of democracy / Josiah Ober.

Notes:

Originally published: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Based on a conference at Wellesley College in October 1990.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-259) and index.

ISBN:

0195124154

9780195124156

OCLC:

38216479