Bøger i Mythoseikonpoiesis serien

Man ist sich heute einig: Die Musen sind weibliche griechische Gottheiten, die mit der Kunst und der Inspiration verbunden sind. Ihre Bedeutung in der archaischen Dichtung ist anerkannte Tatsache. Man ist jedoch hilflos, wenn es darum geht, sie praziser zu fassen und ihr Wirken verstandlich zu machen. Als gottliche Personifizierungen der mysteriosen Kunst-Machte lassen sie sich nur schwer in die Begriffe und Kategorien unseres modernen Verstandes umsetzen. Durch die konsequente Berucksichtigung des Kontextes, Autor fur Autor, der vielfaltigen Epitheta, der Besonderheiten und spezifischen Handlungen der Musen in epischen und lyrischen Versen des archaischen Griechenlands versucht das Buch, welches die erste vollstandige Monographie uber die Kunstgottinnen darstellt, Licht in das Dunkel zu bringen. Die Analyse der 295 'musischen' Stellen eroffnet nicht nur eine ganze Reihe neuer Einzeleinsichten, sondern bietet zugleich einen umfassenden Uberblick uber das reichhaltige und erstaunlich koharente Phanomen der musischen Inspiration am Anfang unserer Kultur.

This book is about the bold, beautiful, and faithful heroines of the Greek novels and their mythical models, such as Iphigenia, Phaedra, Penelope, and Helen. The novels manipulate readerly expectations through a complex web of mythical variants and constantly negotiate their adventure and erotic plot with that of traditional myths becoming, thus, part of the imperial mythical revision to which they add the prospect of a happy ending.

Showcases the importance of diachronic models for the interpretation of ancient Greek literature and culture. In this title, the contributors seek to be methodologically explicit as they build a variety of diachronic approaches to a wide range of subjects. It covers a period that stretches from Homer to Babrius.

This book offers the first attempt at understanding interpersonal violence in ancient Athens. While the archaic desire for revenge persisted into the classical period, it was channeled by the civil discourse of the democracy. Forensic speeches, curse tablets, and comedy display a remarkable openness regarding the definition of violence. But in daily life, Athenians had to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They did so by enacting a discourse on violence in the performance of these genres, during which complex negotiations about the legitimacy of violence took place. Performances such as the staging of trials and comedies ritually defined the meaning of violence and its appropriate application. Speeches and curse tablets not only spoke about violence, but also exacted it in a mediated form, deriving its legitimate use from a democratic principle, the communal decision of the human jurors in the first case and the underworld gods in the second. Since discourse and reality were intertwined and the discourse was ritualized, actual violence might also have been partly ritualized. By still respecting the on-going desire to harm one's enemy, this partial ritualization of violence helped restrain violence and thus contributed to Athens' relative stability.

Despite the recent and intensified scholarly interest in the field of myth and ritual, inquiry into major shifts in mythical and ritual poetics is still in a preliminary stage. The essays in this collection advance our understanding considerably as they probe the intersections of myth and ritual with the plot of the novels.