Author : Thorsten Fögen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 498 pages
File Size : 32,2 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 3110201119
This volume presents a wide range of contributions that analyse the cultural, sociological and communicative significance of tears and crying in Graeco-Roman antiquity. The papers cover the time from the eighth century BCE until late antiquity and take into account a broad variety of literary genres such as epic, tragedy, historiography, elegy, philosophical texts, epigram and the novel. The collection also contains two papers from modern socio-psychology.
Author : Margaret Alexiou
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Page : 504 pages
File Size : 43,75 MB
Release : 2017-06-05
Category : History
ISBN : 1474403816
Explores the range and complexity of human emotions and their transmission across cultural traditionsWhat makes us laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time? How do these two primal, seemingly discrete and non-verbal modes of expression intersect in everyday life and ritual, and what range of emotions do they evoke? How may they be voiced, shaped and coloured in literature and liturgy, art and music?Bringing together scholars from diverse periods and disciplines of Hellenic and Byzantine studies, this volume explores the shifting shapes and functions of laughter and tears. With a focus on the tragic, the comic and the tragicomic dimensions of laughter and tears in art, literature and performance, as well as on their emotional, socio-cultural and religious significance, it breaks new ground in the study of ancient and Byzantine affectivity.Key featuresIncludes an international cast of 25 distinguished contributors Prominence is given to performative arts and to interactions with other cultures Transitions from Late Antiquity to Byzantium, and from Byzantium to the Renaissance, form focal points from which contributors look backwards, forwards and sidewaysHighlights the variety, audacity and quality of the finest Byzantine works and the extent to which they anticipated the renaissance
Author : Thorsten Fögen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 49,29 MB
Release : 2010-01-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 3110212536
In the Graeco-Roman world, the cosmic order was enacted, in part, through bodies. The evaluative divisions between, for example, women and men, humans and animals, “barbarians” and “civilized” people, slaves and free citizens, or mortals and immortals, could all be played out across the terrain of somatic difference, embedded as it was within wider social and cultural matrices. This volume explores these thematics of bodies and boundaries: to examine the ways in which bodies, lived and imagined, were implicated in issues of cosmic order and social organisation in classical antiquity. It focuses on the body in performance (especially in a rhetorical context), the erotic body, the dressed body, pagan and Christian bodies as well as divine bodies and animal bodies. The articles draw on a range of evidence and approaches, cover a broad chronological and geographical span, and explore the ways bodies can transgress and dissolve, as well shore up, or even create, boundaries and hierarchies. This volume shows that boundaries are constantly negotiated, shifted and refigured through the practices and potentialities of embodiment.
Author : John S. Kloppenborg
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 447 pages
File Size : 11,42 MB
Release : 2002-09-11
Category : History
ISBN : 1134778570
Based upon a series of detailed case studies of associations such as early synagogues and churches, philosophical schools and pagan mystery cults, this collection addresses the question of what can legitimately be termed a 'voluntary association'. Employing modern sociological concepts, the essays show how the various associations were constituted, the extent of their membership, why people joined them and what they contributed to the social fabric of urban life. For many, those groups were the most significant feature of social life beyond family and work. All of them provided an outlet of religious as well as social commitments. Also included are studies of the way in which early Jewish and Christian groups adopted and adapted the models of private association available to them and how this affected their social status and role. Finally, the situation of women is discussed, as some of the voluntary associations offered them a more significant recognition than they received in society at large.
Author : Fergus J. King
Publisher : Mohr Siebeck
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 45,16 MB
Release : 2020-11-09
Category : Religion
ISBN : 3161595459
The Gospel of John and Epicureanism share vocabulary and reject the conventions of Graeco-Roman theology. Would it then have been easy for an Epicurean to become a Christian or vice-versa? Fergus J. King suggests that such claims become unlikely when detailed analyses of the two traditions are set out and compared. The first step in his examination looks at evidence for potential engagement between the two traditions historically and geographically. Both traditions address concerns about the good life, death, and the divine. However, this correspondence soon unravels as their worldviews are far from identical. Shared terms (like Saviour), their respective rituals, and teaching about community life reveal substantial differences in ethos and behaviour.
Author : Robyn J. Whitaker
Publisher : Mohr Siebeck
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 18,88 MB
Release : 2015-11-13
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783161539787
Robyn. J. Whitaker interprets the Book of Revelation within the context of ancient rhetoric and religion. She argues that the author of Revelation uses a popular rhetorical tool, ekphrasis, to paint word-pictures of God that compete with material images to both critique image-making and simultaneously make an absent God present.
Author : Catherine Hezser
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 22,92 MB
Release : 2017-01-16
Category : Religion
ISBN : 900433906X
This study constitutes the first comprehensive examination of rabbinic body language represented in Palestinian rabbinic sources of late antiquity. Catherine Hezser examines rabbis’ appearance and demeanor, spatial movement, gestures, and facial expressions on the basis of literary and social-anthropological methods and theories. She discusses the various forms of rabbis’ non-verbal communication in the context of Graeco-Roman and ancient Christian literary sources and in connection with the material culture of Roman and early Byzantine Palestine. Catherine Hezser convincingly shows that in rabbinic literature body language serves as an important means of rabbis’ self-fashioning. Rabbinic texts create the image of a particularly Jewish type of intellectual who functioned and competed for adherents within the highly visual and body-conscious environment of late antiquity.
Author : Ad Vingerhoets
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 19,62 MB
Release : 2013-02-28
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0191639974
Crying has fascinated mankind for millenia. Since ancient times, we have known that emotional tears are a unique human characteristic. Unsurprisingly, over hundreds of years, scholars from different backgrounds have speculated about the origin and functions of human tears. According to Charles Darwin, tears fulfilled no adaptive function. And yet, this seems in sharp contrast to statements in the popular media about the significance of crying. Crying is thought to bring relief and is considered healthy - and withholding tears unhealthy. In addition, tears have been said to inhibit aggression in assaulters and to promote social bonding. Perhaps that could explain why tears have been so important in our evolution. Ad Vingerhoets is one of the few scientists in the world to have studied crying. He examines in Why only humans weep which claims about crying are scientifically tenable - which are fact and which are fiction? Though a psychologist, he doesn't just restrict himself to the current psychological literature, but also explores work in evolutionary biology, neurosciences, theology, art, history, and anthropology to provide an integrated perspective on this complex phenomenon. Written throughout in an academically accessible style, this book is groundbreaking in contributing to a modern scientific understanding of crying. It will have broad appeal to psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers, biologists, and anthropologists.
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 45,96 MB
Release : 2021-01-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9004445080
Usages of the Past in Roman Historiography contains 11 articles on how the Ancient Roman historians used, and manipulated, the past. Key themes include the impact of autocracy, the nature of intertextuality, and the frontiers between history and other genres.
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 800 pages
File Size : 27,21 MB
Release : 2012-06-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9004229205
The history of anatomy has been the subject of much recent scholarship. This volume shifts the focus to the many different ways in which the function of the body and its fluids were understood in pre-modern European thought. Contributors demonstrate how different academic disciplines can contribute to our understanding of ‘physiology’, and investigate the value of this category to pre-modern medicine. The book contains individual essays on the wider issues raised by ‘physiology’, and detailed case studies that explore particular aspects and individuals. It will be useful to those working on medicine and the body in pre-modern cultures, in disciplines including classics, history of medicine and science, philosophy, and literature. Contributors include Barbara Baert, Marlen Bidwell-Steiner, Véronique Boudon-Millot, Rainer Brömer, Elizabeth Craik, Tamás Demeter, Valeria Gavrylenko, Hans L. Haak, Mieneke te Hennepe, Sabine Kalff, Rina Knoeff, Sergius Kodera, Liesbet Kusters, Karine van ‘t Land, Tomas Macsotay, Michael McVaugh, Vivian Nutton, Barbara Orland, Jacomien Prins, Julius Rocca, Catrien Santing, Daniel Schäfer, Emma Sidgwick, Frank W. Stahnisch, Diana Stanciu, Michael Stolberg, Liba Taub, Fabio Tutrone, Katrien Vanagt, and Marion A. Wells.
