Introduction

Figurines ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Jaś Elsner
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium

This book has three purposes. First, it is an attempt to put on the table the category of the figurine as a key conceptual and material problematic in the art history of antiquity. It does so through comparative juxtaposition of close-focused papers drawn from deep art-historical engagement with specific ancient cultures, all but the last from the first millennium BCE; the cultures addressed being ancient Greek, ancient Chinese, Mesoamerican before the arrival of Europeans, and Roman in late antiquity. Second, in doing so, and alongside other books in this series by the same authors, it makes a claim for comparative conversation across the disciplines that constitute the art history of the ancient world, through finding categories and models of discourse that may offer fertile ground for comparison and antithesis....

The Experience of Poetry

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Attridge
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

The question this book addresses is whether, in addition to its other roles, poetry—or a cultural practice we now call poetry—has, across the two-and-a-half millennia from the composition of the Homeric epics to the publication of Ben Jonson’s Works and the death of Shakespeare in 1616, continuously afforded the pleasurable experience we identify with the crafting of language into memorable and moving rhythmic forms. Parts I and II examine the evidence for the performance of the Iliad and the Odyssey and of Ancient Greek lyric poetry, the impact of the invention of writing on Alexandrian verse, the performances of poetry that characterized Ancient Rome, and the private and public venues for poetic experience in Late Antiquity. Part III deals with medieval verse, exploring the oral traditions that spread across Europe in the vernacular languages, the importance of manuscript transmission, the shift from roll to codex and from papyrus to parchment, and the changing audiences for poetry. Part IV explores the achievements of the English Renaissance, from the manuscript verse of Henry VIII’s court to the anthologies and collections of the late Elizabethan period. Among the topics considered in this part are the advent of print, the experience of the solitary reader, the continuing significance of manuscript circulation, the presence of poet figures in pageants and progresses, and the appearance of poets on the Elizabethan stage. Tracking both continuity and change, the book offers a history of what, over these twenty-five centuries, it has meant to enjoy a poem.

Conditions of Visibility

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
Shared Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Prejudice ◽  
Historical Past

We often assume that works of visual art are meant to be seen. Yet that assumption may be a modern prejudice. The ancient world - from China to Greece, Rome to Mexico - provides many examples of statues, paintings, and other images that were not intended to be visible. Instead of being displayed, they were hidden, buried, or otherwise obscured. In this third volume in the Visual Conversations in Art & Archaeology series, leading scholars working at the intersection of archaeology and the history of art address the fundamental question of art's visibility. What conditions must be met, what has to be in place, for a work of art to be seen at all? The answer is both historical and methodological; it concerns ancient societies and modern disciplines, and encompasses material circumstances, perceptual capacities, technologies of visualization, protocols of classification, and a great deal more. The emerging field of archaeological art history is uniquely suited to address such questions. Intrinsically comparative, this approach cuts across traditional ethnic, religious, and chronological categories to confront the academic present with the historical past. The goal is to produce a new art history that is at once cosmopolitan in method and global in scope, and in doing so establish new ways of seeing - new conditions of visibility - for shared objects of study.

Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Ancient Science ◽  
Classical World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
The Many ◽  
Reading Key

The book offers 50 essays introducing, surveying, summarizing, and analyzing the many sciences of the classical world, that is, ancient Greek and Roman worlds. The opening section offers 10 essays on mathematics, astronomy, and medicine in other ancient cultures that may have either influenced the Greek world or else served as informative alternative accounts of ancient science. There is a brief section on Greek science of the 6th through 4th centuries bce, then a long section on Greek science of the Hellenistic era, the period in which ancient Greek science was most active. The Greco-Roman era, that is the early Roman Empire, is treated in a fourth section, and the final section addresses the sciences of Late Antiquity, or Early Byzantine, period, the 4th through 7th centuries ce. Throughout, the volume insists on the close integration of the ancient sciences with one another and on the consequent necessity to study them as a whole, not in isolation. Sciences elsewhere neglected or excluded are here included as first-class citizens, such as alchemy, astrology, paradoxography, pharmacy, and physiognomy. The essays invite readers to study these fascinating disciplines, and in many cases offer new interpretations and syntheses. Each essay includes a bibliography supporting its content and providing further reading. Key figures in the history of ancient science, Pythagoras with Plato, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, and Ptolemy, each receive their own essay.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
The Third ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The City

Scholars have traditionally approached the history of Rome in late antiquity as a metaphor for the fate of the empire and the ancient world, focusing on the distancing of the imperial court or on the growing importance of the Christian church. However, as this introduction argues, it is by focusing on the Roman aristocracy and its relationship with the city and its spaces that we can form a comprehensive understanding of the physical and historical developments that redefined Rome during this period. After providing a brief overview of the developments that shaped the city and its elite, between the end of the third and the beginning of the sixth century, the introduction discusses the nature of the evidence available, as well as the approach adopted in the book.

The Political Ideology of Guided Democracy

1963 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Arsenio Torres
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Parallel Development ◽  
History Of

Contemporary discussions of political forms exhibit a concern with constitutional procedures and values seldom encountered in the history of political thought. The search for a parallel development would require a turning to the classical period of Greek and Roman philosophy and politics. In the light of contemporary constitutional self-consciousness, as well as of the sustained inquiry of the ancient world into the various forms of polity, pure and degraded, ideal and historical, the political analyses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries assume the character of politico-ideological crystallizations of the breakdown of the ancien regime. There are, of course, fundamental underlying differences between these three periods of political reflection. The ancient Greek analyses, although centering on Greek realities and problems, bear, prima facie, a style of detached theory intended to be taken as philosophy, no more, no less.

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