On the Role of Accent in Ancient Greek Poetry

Mnemosyne ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-554
Author(s):  
Alejandro Abritta
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
Statistical Consideration ◽  
Word Shape

AbstractIn this paper, I set out to study the distribution of some accentual types of two different word shapes in the Homeric hexameter: iambs and iambic ending words and dactyls and dactylic ending words. Following Nagy 2000 and 2010 and David 2006, I start from the idea that accent has a role in Ancient Greek poetry, which has been corroborated in Abritta 2015 by studying the distribution of trochaic ending words. In the sections corresponding to each word shape, after a statistical consideration of the distribution, I examine some literary uses of accentual types, which the poet places in the line apparently in order to produce a certain effect on the audience. The article is conceived as a first approximation to the study of accentual distribution in Ancient Greek poetry.

Performing Sappho’s Fractured Archive, or Listening for the Queer Sounds in the Life and Works of Natalie Clifford Barney

2018 ◽  
pp. 47-78
Author(s):  
Samuel N. Dorf
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
French Culture ◽  
Queer Performance ◽  
Private Collections

This chapter excavates the remaining traces of pseudo-ancient Greek musical and dance performance that took place in Natalie Clifford Barney’s Parisian home in the first decades of the twentieth century. Barney’s discovery of Greek antiquity came about at the same time that she became aware of her own sexual identity. She perceived a freedom in the culture of ancient Lesbos and Athens that she felt was lacking in early twentieth-century American and French culture, and she used her passion for studying ancient Greek poetry under the tutelage of the best Greek scholars in Paris to channel both her creative and erotic interests in a very public way. This chapter focuses on the alterity of queer performance and reception within Barney’s Parisian circle by exploring how queer performance and identity were mapped in her cultural salon. The evidence of these performances remains in fragments, scattered across public and private collections, preserved in photographs, memoirs, letters, and anecdotes told third-hand. The chapter draws on theories of performance and queerness to make sense of the archival materials relating to re-enactment of ancient Greek dance and music hosted at the heiress’s home. This illustrates the role of ancient Greek–inspired music and dance in defining queer subjectivity in early twentieth-century Parisian salons. In piecing together fragments, this chapter offers new ways for musicologists to think about performance and the archive.

Theocritus' Adoniazusae

1995 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-158
Author(s):  
Malcolm Davies
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Hellenistic Poetry ◽  
Role Of Religion

Theocritus' poem on the women celebrating the festival of Adonis (Idyll 15) has received surprisingly little attention over the years, especially when compared with other Theocritean Idylls of like length. Matthew Arnold's notorious rhapsody (‘a page torn fresh out of the book of human life. What freedom! What animation! What gaiety! What naturalness! … When such is Greek poetry of the decadence, what must be Greek poetry of the prime?’) has perhaps done more harm than good, by focusing attention too exclusively on the first hundred lines or so of the poem (and indeed Arnold himself was of the opinion that the hymn to Adonis at vv. 100ff. contains ‘of religious emotion, in our acceptation of the words, and of the comfort springing from religious emotion, not a particle’). And yet the poem is second only to Euripides' Bacchae as a document revealing the ways in which religion in the ancient Greek world could offer women an escape (however temporary) from the drab banalities of their everyday existence. And the central contrast between the eternal and idealized glamour of the world of myth and the time-bound existence of Praxinoa and Gorgo (a contrast which is crucial for the above-mentioned role of religion) is absolutely characteristic of one essential aspect of Hellenistic poetry, an aspect that looks back to the world of Euripides and forward to that of Roman poets like Catullus or Propertius. In this paper I shall examine both these features of the Idyll. Also, inspired by those scholars who have illuminated facets of the Dionysiac religion by adducing comparable (if secular) twentieth-century material, I shall try to achieve something similar for Theocritus' poem by drawing on comparative material from late twentieth-century Japan relating to a phenomenon that allows Japanese housewives temporary escape from a tedious and restricted way of life.

Rapid evaluation of FDG imaging alternatives using head-to-head comparisons of full ring and gamma camera based PET scanners –

2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (05) ◽  
pp. 208-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. M. Haslinghuis-Bajan ◽  
L. Hooft ◽  
A. van Lingen ◽  
M. van Tulder ◽  
W. Devillé ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Quality ◽  
Gamma Camera ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Prospective Evaluation ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
Variable Head ◽  
Malignant Lesions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Pet Scanners

SummaryAim: While FDG full ring PET (FRPET) has been gradually accepted in oncology, the role of the cheaper gamma camera based alternatives (GCPET) is less clear. Since technology is evolving rapidly, “tracker trials” would be most helpful to provide a first approximation of the relative merits of these alternatives. As difference in scanner sensitivity is the key variable, head-to-head comparison with FRPET is an attractive study design. This systematic review summarises such studies. Methods: Nine studies were identified until July 1, 2000. Two observers assessed the methodological quality (Cochrane criteria), and extracted data. Results: The studies comprised a variety of tumours and indications. The reported GC- and FRPET agreement for detection of malignant lesions ranged from 55 to 100%, but with methodological limitations (blinding, standardisation, limited patient spectrum). Mean lesion diameter was 2.9 cm (SD 1.8), with only about 20% <1.5 cm. The 3 studies with the highest quality reported concordances of 74-79%, for the studied lesion spectrum. Contrast at GCPET was lower than that of FRPET, contrast and detection agreement were positively related. Logistic regression analysis suggested that pre-test indicators might be used to predict FRPET-GCPET concordance. Conclusion: In spite of methodological limitations, “first generation” GCPET devices detected sufficient FRPET positive lesions to allow prospective evaluation in clinical situations where the impact of FRPET is not confined to detection of small lesions (<1.5 cm). The efficiency of head-to-head comparative studies would benefit from application in a clinically relevant patient spectrum, with proper blinding and standardisation of acquisition procedures.

From Performance to Casket Copy

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Cordell M. Waldron
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Standard Of Comparison

Does the central role of the Iliad and the Odyssey in ancient Greek culture indicate that they functioned as scripture? Taking the role of the Tanakh in Jewish culture as the standard of comparison, this essay argues that, while the Tanakh and the epics functioned similarly as foundational texts in their respective cultures, the ways in which Homer was used in Hellenic culture differ markedly from the ways in which the Tanakh was used in ancient Jewish culture. The Homeric epics were primarily thought of as orally delivered or performed events throughout most of their history, only coming to be thought of as primarily written texts in the Hellenistic era and later, whereas almost from its origins the Tanakh commands and exemplifies a textcentered community in which that which is written is most important.

Levantine Art in the “Orientalizing” Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 369-383
Author(s):  
Marian H. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
First Millennium

The “Orientalizing period” represents a scholarly designation used to describe the eighth and seventh centuries bce when regions in Greece, Italy, and farther west witnessed a flourishing of arts and cultures attributed to contact with cultural areas to the east—in particular that of the Phoenicians. This chapter surveys Orientalizing as an intellectual and historiographic concept and reconsiders the role of purportedly Phoenician arts within the existing scholarly narratives. The Orientalizing period should be understood as a construct of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship that was structured around a false dichotomy between the Orient (the East) and the West. The designation “Phoenician” has a similarly complex historiographic past rooted in ancient Greek stereotyping that has profoundly shaped modern scholarly interpretations. This chapter argues that the luxury arts most often credited as agents of Orientalization—most prominent among them being carved ivories, decorated metal bowls, and engraved tridacna shells—cannot be exclusively associated with a Phoenician cultural origin, thus calling into question the primacy of the Phoenicians in Orientalizing processes. Each of these types of objects appears to have a much broader production sphere than is indicated by the attribute as Phoenician. In addition, the notion of unidirectional influences flowing from east to west is challenged, and instead concepts of connectivity and networking are proposed as more useful frameworks for approaching the problem of cultural relations during the early part of the first millennium bce.

scholarly journals Modeling Syntactic Change under Contact: The Case of Italiot Greek

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Cristina Guardiano ◽  
Melita Stavrou
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Potential Source ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Structures

In this paper, we investigate patterns of persistence and change affecting the syntax of nominal structures in Italiot Greek in comparison to Modern (and Ancient) Greek, and we explore the role of Southern Italo-Romance as a potential source of interference. Our aim is to highlight the dynamics that favor syntactic contact in this domain: we provide an overview of the social context where these dynamics have taken place and of the linguistic structures involved.

scholarly journals Bodies Out of Time: Sculpting Queer Poetics and Queering Classical Sculpture in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Raw Material ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek World

AbstractTwo major themes dominate the poetry of the Alexandrian poet, C. P. Cavafy: homosexual desire and Greekness, broadly defined. This paper explores the interconnectivity of these motifs, showing how Cavafy’s poetic queerness is expressed through his relationship with the ancient Greek world, especially Hellenistic Alexandria. I focus on Cavafy’s incorporation of ancient sculpture into his poetry and the ways that sculpture, for Cavafy, is a vehicle for expressing forbidden desires in an acceptable way. In this, I draw on the works of Liana Giannakopoulou on statuary in modern Greek poetry and Dimitris Papanikolaou on Cavafy’s homosexuality and its presentation in the poetry. Sculpture features in around a third of Cavafy’s poems and pervades it in various ways: the inclusion of physical statues as focuses of ecphrastic description, the use of sculptural language and metaphor, and the likening of Cavafy’s beloveds to Greek marbles of the past, to name but three. This article argues that Cavafy utilizes the statuary of the ancient Greek world as raw material, from which he sculpts his modern Greek queerness, variously desiring the statuesque bodies of contemporary Alexandrian youths and constructing eroticized depictions of ancient Greek marbles. The very ontology of queerness is, for Cavafy, ‘created’ using explicitly sculptural metaphors (e.g. the repeated uses of the verb κάνω [‘to make’] in descriptions of ‘those made like me’) and he employs Hellenistic statues as a productive link between his desires and so-called ‘Greek desire’, placing himself within a continuum of queer, Greek men.

scholarly journals THEBES IN THE BOIOTIANS’ MYTHOLOGICAL NARRATIVE

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-21
Author(s):  
O. Kiriakov
Keyword(s):  
Main Role ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
The People ◽  
New Tradition ◽  
Written Sources

he article is devoted to the study of the Boiotians’ myths. These legendary stories were a basis of the imagined past. So myths had formed the mentality of the Ancient Greek society. The main for Boiotian people was a myth about the own migration. We can find this tale in the “History” by Thucydides. But it was only a later retelling of the myths of the epic text. The first version of the tale we need to look for in the epic texts such as Homer’s “Iliad” and Hesiod’s poems. So myth about migration of Boiotians was the basis of the imagined past of the people of this region. Main role of the tale was played by Boiotians, who became eponym of the people. The author tried to recover myths about the polis of Thebes. Differences between regional and polis tales may answer the question: what was a real role played by polis of Thebes in the imagined past of Boiotian people. Ancient Greeks created a great number of myths about Thebes. A lot of these tales were a basis for Attic classical tragedy. But none of the earliest mythological narratives of Thebes intersect with myth of the Boiotians origin. The biggest polis of the region didn’t play any role at the imagining past of the Boiotian people. But imagined past could be changed. One of the examples we can find at Corinna’s poems. This source told us that first king of Thebes was a son of Boiotos. It was the newer tradition than an epic migration story. This tale appeared at the period of Thebes’ hegemony. And it has sense only as propaganda of polis of Thebes in the region. Mythological origin genealogy was softly rewriting of the imagined past. A new reality was created by using a poem in ritual. So, Thebes had a political motive to change imagine past and used for that soft mythical genealogy. The repeating through the ritual should have justified this new tradition. This research is based on the ancient written sources and academic studies. The article is an attempt to understand how myths were created and influenced the life of Ancient Greeks.

scholarly journals EMOTION AS A FEATURE OF ARISTOTELIAN EUDAIMONIA AND AFRICAN COMMUNITARIANISM

Phronimon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-61
Author(s):  
Bernard Matolino
Keyword(s):  
African Philosophy ◽  
Interesting Aspect ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Emotional Basis

Taking it to be the case that there are reasonable grounds to compare African communitarianism and Aristotle’s eudaimonia, or any aspect of African philosophy with some ancient Greek philosophy,1;2 I suggest that it is worthwhile to revisit an interesting aspect of interpreting Aristotelian virtue and how that sort of interpretation may rehabilitate the role of emotion in African communitarianism. There has been debate on whether Aristotle’s ethic is exclusively committed to an intellectualist version or a combination of intellectualism and emotion. There are good arguments for holding either view. The same has not quite been attempted with African communitarianism. This paper seeks to work out whether African communitarianism can be viewed on an exclusively emotional basis or a combination of emotion and intellect.

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