Experiencing pain in Imperial Greek culture / Daniel King.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

King, Daniel, 1983- author.

Series:

Oxford classical monographs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pain--Social aspects.

Pain.

Greece--Civilization.

Greece.

Civilization.

Rome--Civilization--Greek influences.

Rome.

Rome (Empire).

Civilization--Greek influences.

Physical Description:

xi, 291 pages ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary:

This book offers a history of pain in Greek culture under the Roman Empire (50-250 CE). Traditional accounts of pain in this period have focused either on philosophical or medical theories of perception or on Christian notions of 'suffering'; fascination with the pained body has often been assumed to be a characteristic of Christian society, rather than Imperial culture in general. This book employs tools from contemporary cultural and literary theory to examine the treatment of pain in a range of important discourses from the first three centuries of the Empire, including medicine, religious writing, novelistic literature, and rhetorical ekphrasis. It argues that pain was approached from a holistic perspective: rather than being treated as a narrowly defined physiological perception, it was conceived as a type of embodied experience in which ideas about the body's physiology, the representation and articulation of its perceptions, and the emotional and cognitive impact of pain were all important facets of what it meant to be in pain. By bringing this conception to light, this volume will redefine our understanding of the ancient body, will rethink current approaches to the social and emotional fabric of the Imperial world, and will help to reposition that community's relationship with the emergence of Christian society in late antiquity. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 Diagnosing and Treating Pain

1 Diagnosing and Treating the Pained Body 33

2 Aretaios of Kappodokia 43

3 Galen 67

4 Diagnosis and Pain 103

Part 2 Representing Pain

5 Refiguring Pain Symptoms 107

6 Sore Feet and Tragedy in Plutarch and Lucian 115

7 Sacred Pain in Ailios Aristeides 129

8 Pain and Language Recalibrated 157

Part 3 Viewing Trauma, Seeing Pain

9 Ekphrasis, Trauma, and Viewing Pain 161

10 Philostratos' Prurient Gaze 175

11 Viewing and Emotional Conflict in Akhilleus Tatios 193

12 Viewing Trauma in Plutarch 217

13 What's in a View? 233.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-278) and indexes.

ISBN:

0198810512

9780198810513

OCLC:

986837655