Authority as ‘Resultant Voice’: Towards a Stylistic and Musical Anthropology of Effective Speech in Archaic Rome

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurizio Bettini
Keyword(s):  
Archaic Period ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Poetic Expression ◽  
Sound Patterns ◽  
Exceptional Character

Abstract Analysis of a large number of texts from the archaic period of Roman culture shows that the authoritative character of a solemn utterance (a prophecy, the formula uttered by a praetor, a religious praefatio) was based principally on specific sound patterns. From these utterances’ use of parallelisms, phonic echoes and syllabic repetitions there emerged a sort of ‘resultant voice’, which made their exceptional character immediately apparent. From the perspective of their intended hearers, the sound-construction of these pronouncements had the capacity to arouse what the Romans called delectatio: that is, the disposition to believe in the truth and validity of what they were hearing. That the Romans included all these acoustic phenomena within a single perceptual domain is demonstrated by the fact that music, too, had the power to produce delectatio—and by the fact that the verb cano and its derivatives refer as much to musical as to poetic expression.

Film Analysis: Image and Movement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Radner ◽  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Film Analysis ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Poetic Expression ◽  
French Tradition ◽  
Classical Hollywood

This chapter assesses Raymond Bellour’s contribution to the area of research known as “film analysis,” arguing that it is best understood as an “art” rather than a scientific practice. Grounded in the French tradition of “explication du texte” as a means of approaching literature, Bellour was among the first film scholars to bring a French literary sensibility to the analysis of Classical Hollywood film, which enabled him to recognize the rhetorical refinements of the cinematic medium and its potential for poetic expression. The chapter explores the significant concepts that define Bellour’s approach: segmentation; “the unattainable text” (also referred to as “the undiscoverable text” or “le texte introuvable”); le blocage symbolique (also referred to as “the symbolic blockage”);“the textual volume”; Hitchcock and psychoanalysis; and enunciation.

Stereotypical sound patterns in humpback whale songs: Usage and function

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Mercado ◽  
Louis M. Herman ◽  
Adam A. Pack
Keyword(s):  
Humpback Whale ◽  
Sound Patterns ◽  
And Function

The agency of Greek and Roman statues. From Homer to Constantine

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 7-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan N. Bremmer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Philosophical Critique ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Greek East ◽  
Political Character

In the Archaic period the Greeks did not yet conceptualize the difference between a divinity and its statue. Therefore, stories that stressed the agency of statues separate from their divinities must have seemed less strange at that time than when the statues had become independent, so to speak, from their gods or goddesses. The latter started to happen in the transitional period to the Classical era when the well-known triad of divinities—heroes—mortals came into being, and philosophers began to criticize the worship of statues. All these changes together led to a development in which the agency of statues increasingly became noteworthy. After the 5th century BC we keep hearing about the agency of statues but we can also notice a growing critique of the worship of statues by different philosophical schools. In both Greece and Rome divine statues manifested themselves in particular during moments of crisis or of a decisive political character. In the Greek East the belief in the agency of statues lasted until the 3rd century AD, as Archaic statues represented a kind of cultural capital for the Greeks under Roman rule. Yet, in the end the continuing philosophical critique, which had been radicalized by the Christians, made the agency of statues intellectually unacceptable.

Going Through Hell; ΤΑΡΤΑΡΟΣ in Greco-Roman Culture, Second Temple Judaism, and Philo of Alexandria

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-378
Author(s):  
Clint Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Greek Myths

This article questions the longstanding supposition that the eschatology of the Second Temple period was solely influenced by Persian or Iranian eschatology, arguing instead that the literature of this period reflects awareness of several key Greco-Roman mythological concepts. In particular, the concepts of Tartarus and the Greek myths of Titans and Giants underlie much of the treatment of eschatology in the Jewish literature of the period. A thorough treatment of Tartarus and related concepts in literary and non-literary sources from ancient Greek and Greco-Roman culture provides a backdrop for a discussion of these themes in the Second Temple period and especially in the writings of Philo of Alexandria.

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