Felix J. Meister, Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity, Oxford, 2019.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
Collection : Oxford Classical Monographs
272 pages
ISBN : 9780198847687
£60.00

The polar dichotomy between man and god, and the insurmountable gulf between them, are considered a fundamental principle of archaic and classical Greek religion. Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity argues that poetry produced between the eighth and the fifth centuries BC does not present such a uniform view of the world, demonstrating instead that particular genres of poetry may assess the distance between humans and gods differently. Discussion focuses on genres where the boundaries appear to be more flexible, with wedding songs, victory odes, and selected passages from tragedy and comedy taken as case studies that illustrate that some human individuals may, in certain situations, be presented as enjoying a state of happiness, a degree of beauty, or an amount of power comparable to that of the gods. A central question throughout is whether these presentations stem from an individual poet's creative ingenuity or from the conventional ideological repertoire of the respective genre, and how this difference might shape the comparison of a human with the gods. Another important question concerns the ritual contexts in which some of these songs would have been performed, expanding the scope of the analysis beyond merely a literary device to encompass a fundamental aspect of archaic and classical Greek culture.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
List of Illustrations
Texts, Translations, Abbreviations
1: Introduction
Notions of divinity in archaic and classical literature
Approximations to divinity after the fifth century
The human and the divine in archaic and classical literature
2: Divine Happiness and Beauty in Wedding Songs
Introduction
Traditions of weddings songs
Explicit comparisons with heroic and divine beauty
Implicit comparisons with divine happiness
Hymnic register
Heroes and gods as bridal couples
Wedding ceremonies
Wedding iconography
Conclusion
3: Divine Happiness in the Victory Ode
Introduction
Myth and immortality
Moment and eternity
Victory sculpture
Nemean 1
Isthmian 4
Pythian 10
Conclusion
4: Divine Power in Tragedy
Introduction
The ritual of supplication
Supplication in tragedy
Comic entries
Tragic illusions
Illusions induced
Conclusion
5: Epilogue
Endmatter
Iconographical Appendix
References
Index

Source : Oxford University Press