Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 288 pages
- Published by: Oxford University Press, USA July 23, 1998
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0195124154
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195124156
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Book Dimensions:
10 x 7.1 x 0.7 inches
- Weighs: 1.4 pounds
Product Review
"This book provides a fascinating insight into a range of cultural, historical, political and literary aspects of archaic Greecethe articles are very clearly written and usually execute the cross-disciplinary exercise with uncommon good sense."--Ancient History
"Some of the most interesting work in classical studies in the past twenty years."--Classical Philology
Product Description
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.