Philosophers have often reflected on the Ancient Greeks' concepts of time, but an anthropological approach is necessary to understand their practical concept of time as tied to space. The Greeks not only spoke of time unfolding in a specific space, but also projected the past upon the future in order to make it active in the social practice of the present. Hesiod's history of humanity was intended to establish justice in the modern city; Bacchylides sang the celebration of the Athenian hero Theseus in a present-day cultic and ideological framework; the city of Cyrene used the heroic act of...
Philosophers have often reflected on the Ancient Greeks' concepts of time, but an anthropological approach is necessary to understand their practical ...
The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece offers the first comprehensive inquiry into the deity of sexual love, a power that permeated daily Greek life. Avoiding Foucault's philosophical paradigm of dominance/submission, Claude Calame uses an anthropological and linguistic approach to re-create indigenous categories of erotic love. He maintains that Eros, the joyful companion of Aphrodite, was a divine figure around which poets constructed a physiology of desire that functioned in specific ways within a network of social relations. Calame begins by showing how poetry and...
The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece offers the first comprehensive inquiry into the deity of sexual love, a power that permeated dail...
Surely the ancient Greeks would have been baffled to see what we consider their "mythology." Here, Claude Calame mounts a powerful critique of modern-day misconceptions on this front and the lax methodology that has allowed them to prevail. He argues that the Greeks viewed their abundance of narratives not as a single mythology but as an "archaeology." They speculated symbolically on key historical events so that a community of believing citizens could access them efficiently, through ritual means. Central to the book is Calame's rigorous and fruitful analysis of various accounts of the...
Surely the ancient Greeks would have been baffled to see what we consider their "mythology." Here, Claude Calame mounts a powerful critique of mode...
Exploring a variety of literary texts representing different poetic genres, Claude Calame, an internationally known classicist, draws the lineaments of a real history of the means used by ancient Greek poets to create in their works a fictional...
Exploring a variety of literary texts representing different poetic genres, Claude Calame, an internationally known classicist, draws the lineaments o...
In this groundbreaking work, Claude Calame argues that the songs sung by choruses of young girls in ancient Greek poetry are more than literary texts; rather, they functioned as initiatory rituals in Greek cult practices. Using semiotic and anthropologic theory, Calame reconstructs the religious and social institutions surrounding the songs, demonstrating their function in an aesthetic education that permitted the young girls to achieve the stature of womanhood and to be integrated into the adult civic community. This first English edition includes an updated bibliography.
In this groundbreaking work, Claude Calame argues that the songs sung by choruses of young girls in ancient Greek poetry are more than literary texts;...
Using myths such as those of Persephone, Bellerophon, Helen and Teiresias, Claude Calame presents an overview of Greek mythology as a category inseparable from the literature in which so much of it is found.
Using myths such as those of Persephone, Bellerophon, Helen and Teiresias, Claude Calame presents an overview of Greek mythology as a category insepar...
