Archaic Greek Epigram and Dedication: Representation and Reperformance (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780521896306)

Together with sacrifice, prayer, and libation, offering dedications was a basic religious activity among ancient Greeks. By the end of the Archaic period (c. 480 B.C.), sanctuaries were bursting with dedications, including finer ones such as statues bearing epigrams. Scholarly treatments have focused on formal matters and, more recently, the function of dedications as social display. This is the first study to view dedications comprehensively as sites of ritual efficacy and, especially, to recover epigram's reflections of and contributions to that efficacy and restore it to an important place in the panorama of Greek religious practice.To reconstruct the Archaic experience of reading and viewing, the book draws on studies of traditional poetic language as resonant with immanent meaning, early Greek poetry as socially and religiously effective performance, and viewing art as an active response of aesthetic appreciation.

Author: Joseph W. Day
ISBN-10: 0521896304
ISBN-13: 9780521896306
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/29/2010
Pages: 344
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.10d