The anatomy of dance discourse : literary and philosophical approaches to dance in the later Graeco-Roman world / Karin Schlapbach.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schlapbach, Karin, 1969- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization, Greco-Roman.

Dance--Rome--History.

Dance.

Dance--Anthropological aspects--Rome.

Dance--Anthropological aspects.

Rome (Empire).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

x, 339 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Within the newly thriving field of ancient Greek and Roman performance and dance studies. The Anatomy of Dance Discourse offers a fresh and original perspective on ancient perceptions of dance. Focusing mainly on the second century CE, it provides an overview of the dance discourse of this period, explores the conceptualization of dance across an array of different texts-Plutarch, Lucian of Samosata, the apocryphal Acts of John, Longus, and Apuleius-and juxtaposing them with discussions of Xenophon and Nonnus. The volume is divided into two parts: while the second part discusses ekphraseis of dance performance in prose and poetry, the first delves more deeply into an examination of how both philosophical and literary treatments of dance interacted with other areas of cultural expression, whether language and poetry, rhetoric and art, or philosophy and religion. Its distinctive contribution lies in this juxtaposition of ancient theorizations of dance and philosophical analyses of the medium with literary depictions of dance scenes and performances, and it attends not only to the highly encoded genre of pantomime, which dominated the stage in the Roman Empire, but also to acrobatic, non-representational dances. This twofold nature of dance sparked highly sophisticated reflections on the relationship between dance and meaning in the ancient world, and the volume defends the novel claim that in the imperial period it became more and more palpable that dance, unlike painting or sculpture could be representational or not: a performance of nothing but itself. It argues that dance was understood as a practice in which human beings, whether as dancers or spectators, are confronted with the irreducible reality of their own physical existence, which is constantly changing, and that its way to cognition and action is physical experience. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Elements of Ancient Dance Discourse 1

2 Literary Contexts of Ancient Dance Discourse 6

3 Art and Text, Ekphrasis and Dance 9

4 Mimesis, Display, and the Cultural Force of Dance 18

Part I Frameworks for a Discourse on Dance

1 The Grammar of Dance: Plutarch's Table Talk 9.15 in Context 25

1 Dance and Language: The Legacy of choreia 27

2 The Place of Dance in Plutarch's Table Talk 34

3 Phrase, Pose, and Pointing: Pictorial and Non-Pictorial Reference 42

4 Deixis and Its Relationship with Language Theory 50

5 Deixis as Display, or How Dance Surpasses Language 61

2 The Mimesis of Dance between Eloquence and Visual Art 75

1 The (Ostensible) Paradigm of the Orator 78

2 Icons of Mimesis in Lucian's On Dancing 82

3 Body Language and Its Interpretation 92

4 Dance and the Discourse on Images 103

5 Interactions with 'Performative' Sculpture 110

3 Dance as Method and Experience: Emotional and Epistemic Aspects of Dance 123

1 Dance Discourse and the Protreptic Tradition in Lucian and Libanius 124

2 The Art of Spectatorship and the Dance of the Heavenly Bodies in Plato 132

3 Poetic Models and Philosophical Developments 137

4 Dance and Intelligent Design 141

5 Dance, Experience, and Cognition in the Mysteries 149

6 The Dance in Acts of John 154

Part II Ekphraseis of Dances

4 (Perceived) Authenticity and the Physical Presence of the Performer 169

1 Xenophon's Symposium and New Music 172

2 Pandemos mousike after Xenophon: Aristoxenus and Athenaeus 183

3 Myth and Its Authentication through Dance in Imperial Epigram 189

4 The Dancer's Mimetic Excess 193

5 Dance and Interpretation in Longus and Apuleius 201

1 Interpreting Nature through Storytelling 204

2 Shaping Culture through Dance 209

3 The Meaning of Art 219

4 The Ass at the Theatre 224

5 Lucius' Absorption 233

6 Performance as an Act of Daring 243

6 Elusive Dancers and the Limits of Art in Nonnus' Dionysiaka 251

1 Dance as an Aesthetic Paradigm in Nonnus' Dionysiaka 253

2 The Dancer's Temerity in Dionysiaka 19 263

3 From Change to Interpretation 272.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-328) and index.

ISBN:

0198807724

9780198807728

OCLC:

990713001