Classics and Media Theory

The aim of this volume is to introduce a largely neglected area of existing interactions between Greco-Roman antiquity and media theory. It addresses the question of why interactions in this area matter, and how they might be developed further. The volume seeks to promote more media attentiveness among scholars of Greece and Rome. It also aims to create more awareness of the presence of the classics in media theory. It foregrounds the persistency of Greco-Roman paradigms across the different strands of media theory. And it calls for a closer consideration of the conceptual underpinnings of scholarly practices around the transformation of ancient Greece and Rome into ‘classical’ cultures.

Nuncius ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liba Taub

Abstract Current ideas about the aims and value of scientific work and knowledge may be part of our inherited legacy from Greco-Roman antiquity. While financial rewards were important in the past and are important today, when we look at individual ancient Greeks and Romans known for their scientific ideas and achievement, we see that a number of these were avowedly pursuing science for a gain which was very specific, but not financial. Motivations might include intellectual curiosity and a desire for personal improvement, including increased understanding, as well as an interest in gaining reputation and influencing posterity. In Greco-Roman antiquity there were various ways in which an individual’s scientific achievements could be celebrated, commemorated, honoured and memorialised; several are considered here.


Author(s):  
Pantelis Michelakis

This chapter sketches out some of the features of the encounter between media theory and Greco-Roman antiquity in two complementary ways: as a field of knowledge awaiting further systematic exploration and analysis, but also as a set of methods that under the banner of ‘cultural transmission’ brings together practices for producing and processing knowledge that are fundamental to the way in which ancient cultures become ‘classical’. The discussion begins with the concept of the medium and the promise it holds for analytical work in the study of the past. It then moves on to the role of mediation in thinking about the cultural significance of communication across time and perception. It continues with a consideration of classical studies and media studies as disciplines, focusing on the kinds of research that can be pursued at their intersection. The chapter concludes with an overview of the contributions that follow.


2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-152
Author(s):  
Sharon Kool

Freud's theory is primarily concerned with memory, about the present contained within the past. It is also rooted to the past in another way; Freud's reception of the Greek classical tradition played a vital role in the genesis of his oeuvre. Winckelmann's revival of ‘Greece’ dominated German culture up to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, yet besides the importance of Bildung in shaping Freud's early Gymnasium experience, his influence upon Freud is often neglected. While Freud's debt to German Hellenism is clearly demonstrated in his library of classical literature and his collection of Greco-Roman antiquities, the afterlife of Winckelmann's legacy is more subtly inscribed upon psychoanalysis. This paper focuses on Winckelmann's aesthetic reconstruction of classical Greece which made beauty, self-restraint and repression a cultural ideal to be imitated and admired. It is argued that hysteria provided one of the most powerful challenges to this ideal. Psychoanalysis can thus be seen as developing out of a milieu that was still overshadowed by Winckelmann's idealization of Greece. Further, it is argued that Winckelmann advanced a homoerotic tradition in German culture and the sedimentation of this tradition can be discerned in Freud's response to hysteria, his privileging of the masculine and his theory of bisexuality.


2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caryn A. Reeder

Abstract This paper analyzes the neglected theme of suffering women and children in Josephus’s Jewish War. Women and children did suffer the effects of sieges in Greco-Roman antiquity, but historiographers also use the stories of their suffering to interpret warfare. Josephus participates in this tradition by using the imagery of suffering women and children to condemn the Jewish rebels, a presentation which is also influenced by Deut 28 and Lamentations. The warnings against rebellion in J.W. 2.237, 400, and 5.418 heighten the rhetorical power of this condemnation by offering the alternative of surrender for the sake of women and children.


Phronimon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Strijdom

The cognitive linguist George Lakoff has argued that in the human brain two concepts of the family are mapped onto two contrasting political concepts, which reveal two kinds of systemic morality: a hierarchical, strict and disciplining father morality of conservatives on the one hand, and an egalitarian, nurturing parent morality of progressives or liberals on the other. Taking Lakoff’s thesis as point of departure, I offer a critical comparison of social-political uses of the concept of “home” in the early Roman Empire and Pauline Christianity. For this case study I engage primarily with the work of John Dominic Crossan, a prominent scholar of early Christianity within its Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. Although “home” does not constitute the focus of his analysis, a close reading of his oeuvre does allow us to identify and highlight this as a crucial theme in his work. The focus will be on the patriarchal home under Greco-Roman imperial conditions as model of the imperial system, the Pauline egalitarian concept of the Christian home and house churches, and the deutero-Pauline return to the imperial model. By comparing these case studies from another epoch and another culture, thevalidity of Lakoff’s thesis will be tested and our understanding of the concepts “liberal” and “conservative” will be enriched.


2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 357-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ullucci

AbstractAnimal sacrifice was one of the most pervasive and socially significant practices of Graeco-Roman religion. Yet, numerous Greek and Latin writers tell of a golden before the advent of sacrifice and meat eating. In this idealized world, humans lived at one with the gods and animal sacrifice did not exist. Such texts are often seen as part of a wider ancient critique of Greco-Roman religion in general and animal sacrifice in particular. This interpretive model, largely sprung from Christian theologizing, sees animal sacrifice as a meaningless and base act, destined to be superseded. As a result of this 'critique model', scholars have not asked what the myth of a world without sacrifice means in a world in which sacrifice predominated. This paper seeks to correct the above view by analyzing these texts as instances of created myth. It approaches each occurrence of the myth as an instance of position-taking by a player in the field of cultural production. The paper seeks to further a redescription of Greco-Roman antiquity by revealing the variety of ancient positions on sacrifice and their strategic use by competing cultural producers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
I Vakulyk ◽  

Abstract. The works of Ukrainian neoclassicists as the representatives of the era of «Executed Renaissance», who left an invaluable heritage and made a tremendous contribution to the enrichment of not only Ukrainian but also world literature, have repeatedly become the subject of scholars’ research. The purpose of the study is to analyze the sonnet as a phenomenon that appeared in the first third of the last century: what caused its «rigidity» and «severity», as well as what is its poetic beauty. Materials and methods of research. This article is based on the analysis of archival materials, letters, memoirs, the press of the twenties («Chervonyi Shliakh», «Nova Hromada», etc.), published and unpublished editions of works by Ukrainian neoclassicists. The severity of life dictated its own rules, its own style and its own norms. Sonnets of Ukrainian neoclassicists were also rigit or «strict». Comparative-historical and descriptive methods are used in the work. Discussion. The representatives of the informal society «neoclassicism», which was formed in Ukraine in the 20s of the 20th century, professed an aesthetic concept of spiritual renewal of the writer’s consciousness and the nation in general, disciplined the cardiocentric element of the «executed Renaissance» generation of artists, combining the Dionysian tradition with the Apollonian culture. The aesthetic platform that united the neoclassicists was the love to the word, to the strict form, to the great heritage of the world literature. They realized the sonnet as a «strict style», as a «severe» form. Ukrainian neoclassicists set the task of creating a «great style of Ukrainian literature» based on Greco-Roman antiquity and European Parnassians; hence there is a cult of strict classical forms (sonnet, octave, Alexandrine verse, elegiac distich). When Ukrainian neoclassicists spoke, they did not declaim ideological and aesthetic manifestos. Ukrainian neoclassicists, in contrast to the Russian ones, were distinguished by greater creative conservatism: if the latter put Pushkin as a role model, the first were oriented towards Greco-Roman antiquity and French Parnassians (the first edition of Ukrainian neoclassicism was «The Anthology of Roman Poetry» by M. Zerov, 1920), strictly adhered to canonical classical forms. Conclusions. The genre canon of the sonnet implies conceptuality that must be realized through a certain compositional rhythm according to the universal scheme: thesis – antithesis – synthesis. Such scheme of the sonnet dramatic line development «tells» the poet the most general direction in the development of thought, mood, and contemplation. The sonnet allows to resolve contradictions. Consequently, it is a balance between the stable and the variable, a dialogue with yourself, with the world; this is the beauty of dramatic trembles of poetic content. Finally, this is a distinctive stylistic thinking which attracts primarily the poets of the rationalist mindset.


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