Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies thoroughly unravels its own ‘marriage plot’. Narrating the romance of the golden Lancelot (‘Lotto’) and the mysterious Mathilde from each protagonist's perspective in turn, Groff's novel exposes countless cracks in the decades-long relationship between a pair of twenty-first-century college sweethearts. The second half of the novel is particularly haunted by a sadomasochistic and dubiously consensual relationship between Mathilde and a wealthy older man upon whom she has become financially dependent, a subplot that includes vivid and erotic descriptions of sexual humiliation and subjugation. Groff is certainly not the only modern author to explicitly and self-consciously interrogate the terms of the romantic novel as such: Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot announces its generic play in its title.
劳伦·格罗夫的《命运与复仇》彻底揭开了自己的“婚姻情节”。格罗夫的小说从每个主人公的角度依次讲述了金色的兰斯洛特(“Lotto”)和神秘的玛蒂尔德的浪漫故事，揭露了一对21世纪大学情侣之间长达数十年的关系中的无数裂缝。小说的后半部分特别困扰于玛蒂尔德和一个她在经济上依赖的富有的老男人之间的施虐受虐和令人怀疑的自愿关系，这个次要情节包括对性羞辱和性征服的生动而色情的描述。格罗夫当然不是唯一一个明确地、自觉地质疑浪漫小说术语的现代作家:杰弗里·尤金尼德斯(Jeffrey Eugenides)的《婚姻阴谋》(the Marriage Plot)在书名中就宣布了它的一般玩法。
{"title":"THISBE'S NOVEL: WRITING ROMANCE IN HELIODORUS’ AETHIOPICA","authors":"Sarah Olsen","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2022.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2022.5","url":null,"abstract":"Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies thoroughly unravels its own ‘marriage plot’. Narrating the romance of the golden Lancelot (‘Lotto’) and the mysterious Mathilde from each protagonist's perspective in turn, Groff's novel exposes countless cracks in the decades-long relationship between a pair of twenty-first-century college sweethearts. The second half of the novel is particularly haunted by a sadomasochistic and dubiously consensual relationship between Mathilde and a wealthy older man upon whom she has become financially dependent, a subplot that includes vivid and erotic descriptions of sexual humiliation and subjugation. Groff is certainly not the only modern author to explicitly and self-consciously interrogate the terms of the romantic novel as such: Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot announces its generic play in its title.","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"13 1","pages":"105 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81460900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"RMU volume 51 issue 1 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2022.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2022.8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"80 1","pages":"b1 - b2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73672569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the prologue of Callimachus’ Aetia, every single word opens up a wide, virtually boundless spectrum of suggestions, intimations, and evocations. In this paper, I heed Callimachus’ formal intricacies, joining the decoding game that has vexed and entertained ancient and modern readers by homing in on the para-etymological potentialities of the verb ἀείδω (‘I sing’). I wish to explore the possibility that, in this architext of Callimachean programmatics, ‘singing’ may amount to a sort of aesthetic satisfaction in self-deprivation, with formal elements mobilizing a spiral of eating and non-eating. This exploration offers the opportunity to think about Callimachean ‘singing’ as a challenge to conventional notions of human subjectivity and to the very idea of poetic immortality, expressing something like the wish of a poète maudit not for monumental permanence, but for a looping insistence. We may then see Callimachean aesthetics as less rarefied, aristocratic, and decorous than it is usually made out to be. In the recalcitrance, the unruly looping of poetic form, we may glimpse an aesthetic sense that is more subversive, shaped by temporal stuckness, a rejection of fulfillment, and a hunger that rejects the lack that is satisfaction. I first locate the possibility of an alternative para-etymologizing of ἀείδω within the prologue's discourse of corporeality, in its precarious opposition of thinness and fatness. I then search the epigram dedicated to Heraclitus and the Hymn to Demeter for traces of the restless aesthetics inherent in this para-etymologizing, which I will ultimately connect with queer temporality. The Callimachean hymn invites us to see the poetic persona of the Aetia's proem in a new light—as a counterpart of the starving binge eater Erysichthon, Demeter's enemy, who is barely distinguishable from the goddess herself.
{"title":"QUEER (A)EDI-(M)OLOGY: ON CALLIMACHUS’ AETIA PROLOGUE","authors":"M. Telò","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2022.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2022.2","url":null,"abstract":"In the prologue of Callimachus’ Aetia, every single word opens up a wide, virtually boundless spectrum of suggestions, intimations, and evocations. In this paper, I heed Callimachus’ formal intricacies, joining the decoding game that has vexed and entertained ancient and modern readers by homing in on the para-etymological potentialities of the verb ἀείδω (‘I sing’). I wish to explore the possibility that, in this architext of Callimachean programmatics, ‘singing’ may amount to a sort of aesthetic satisfaction in self-deprivation, with formal elements mobilizing a spiral of eating and non-eating. This exploration offers the opportunity to think about Callimachean ‘singing’ as a challenge to conventional notions of human subjectivity and to the very idea of poetic immortality, expressing something like the wish of a poète maudit not for monumental permanence, but for a looping insistence. We may then see Callimachean aesthetics as less rarefied, aristocratic, and decorous than it is usually made out to be. In the recalcitrance, the unruly looping of poetic form, we may glimpse an aesthetic sense that is more subversive, shaped by temporal stuckness, a rejection of fulfillment, and a hunger that rejects the lack that is satisfaction. I first locate the possibility of an alternative para-etymologizing of ἀείδω within the prologue's discourse of corporeality, in its precarious opposition of thinness and fatness. I then search the epigram dedicated to Heraclitus and the Hymn to Demeter for traces of the restless aesthetics inherent in this para-etymologizing, which I will ultimately connect with queer temporality. The Callimachean hymn invites us to see the poetic persona of the Aetia's proem in a new light—as a counterpart of the starving binge eater Erysichthon, Demeter's enemy, who is barely distinguishable from the goddess herself.","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"20 1","pages":"21 - 46"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85350788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The plague that closes Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura is a spectacle of disgust. Throats sweat with blood (6.47f.); tongues drip with gore (6.1149); breath reeks like rotten cadavers (6.1154f.); drinking water is contaminated when the sick dive into it (6.1174f.); black discharge pours from stomachs (6.1200); foul blood seeps from noses (6.1203); the sick slice off their own hands, feet, and genitals (6.1209f.); dead bodies are entombed by ulcers (6.1271). Again and again Lucretius hits upon domains that have been identified as key disgust elicitors. In Book 6, more than in any other book of the epic, we encounter what is taeter, ‘disgusting’. This adjective appears nine times in the final book (22, 217, 787, 807, 976, 1154, 1200, 1205, and 1266) after showing up one time each in Books 1 (936), 3 (581), and 5 (1126); six times in Book 2 (400, 415, 476, 510, 705, 872); and five times in Book 4 (11, 124, 172, 685, 1176). The vast majority of these instances describe disgust working upon our senses of taste, smell, sight, and even hearing (OLD s.v. 1); that is, ‘primary’ or ‘core’ disgust. At 2.510f., for instance, Lucretius speaks of a substance that is taetrius… / naribus auribus atque oculis orisque sapori (‘more disgusting to noses, ears, eyes, and the taste of the mouth’). But the word can also carry an ethical or moral nuance (OLD s.v. 2), suggesting ‘secondary’ disgust. At 5.1126, for example, the word describes Tartarus, into which thunderbolts ‘scornfully’ hurl sinners (contemptim in Tartara taetra). Here, Lucretius wants his reader to feel a sense of moral aversion to the idea of the Underworld, which throughout the epic he is at pains to prove is nothing but a poetic fiction.
{"title":"LUCRETIUS’ DIDACTICS OF DISGUST","authors":"Stephanie Mccarter","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2022.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2022.3","url":null,"abstract":"The plague that closes Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura is a spectacle of disgust. Throats sweat with blood (6.47f.); tongues drip with gore (6.1149); breath reeks like rotten cadavers (6.1154f.); drinking water is contaminated when the sick dive into it (6.1174f.); black discharge pours from stomachs (6.1200); foul blood seeps from noses (6.1203); the sick slice off their own hands, feet, and genitals (6.1209f.); dead bodies are entombed by ulcers (6.1271). Again and again Lucretius hits upon domains that have been identified as key disgust elicitors. In Book 6, more than in any other book of the epic, we encounter what is taeter, ‘disgusting’. This adjective appears nine times in the final book (22, 217, 787, 807, 976, 1154, 1200, 1205, and 1266) after showing up one time each in Books 1 (936), 3 (581), and 5 (1126); six times in Book 2 (400, 415, 476, 510, 705, 872); and five times in Book 4 (11, 124, 172, 685, 1176). The vast majority of these instances describe disgust working upon our senses of taste, smell, sight, and even hearing (OLD s.v. 1); that is, ‘primary’ or ‘core’ disgust. At 2.510f., for instance, Lucretius speaks of a substance that is taetrius… / naribus auribus atque oculis orisque sapori (‘more disgusting to noses, ears, eyes, and the taste of the mouth’). But the word can also carry an ethical or moral nuance (OLD s.v. 2), suggesting ‘secondary’ disgust. At 5.1126, for example, the word describes Tartarus, into which thunderbolts ‘scornfully’ hurl sinners (contemptim in Tartara taetra). Here, Lucretius wants his reader to feel a sense of moral aversion to the idea of the Underworld, which throughout the epic he is at pains to prove is nothing but a poetic fiction.","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"415 1","pages":"47 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77726690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Figures of intersexed individuals perhaps representing the minor Greek deity Hermaphroditus became, for reasons that are not entirely clear, strikingly popular in Roman sculpture and wall painting in the latter half of the first century CE. Depicting a fully bisexed human body, these figures have resulted in competing interpretations regarding their purpose, meaning, and effect. As it happens, we also have a text from the Augustan period that purports to explain not only the origin of the intersexed Hermaphroditus, but the production of future bisexed individuals, in Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 4. When discussing the sculptures and wall paintings of Hermaphroditus, as a result, scholars have been inevitably drawn to Ovid's narrative. The pull of Ovid is admittedly almost irresistible, and his reputation as a poet who challenges norms, conventions, and genres makes it attractive to see him as creating room for modern notions of gender fluidity. As Georgia Nugent argued more than thirty years ago, however, Ovid's narrative is, in curious ways, a reductive version of the myth, ‘a paradigmatic example of how what is sexually threatening may be textually recuperated and stabilized’. I wish to reanimate Nugent's arguments here, and to suggest that scholars’ regular invocation of Ovid when interpreting the products of Roman art is a mistake, for two reasons: first, the figure Ovid describes is, in fact, not typical of what we see in Roman sculptures and wall paintings; and second, Ovid presents a version of Hermaphroditus’ gender identity that is deliberately less challenging to the stability of sexual binarism—and to traditional gender roles—than are those material depictions. For those of us who wish to advocate for the rights of intersexed individuals, in other words, Ovid is the wrong champion.
{"title":"OVID'S HERMAPHRODITUS AND THE MOLLIS MALE","authors":"Kirk Ormand","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2022.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2022.4","url":null,"abstract":"Figures of intersexed individuals perhaps representing the minor Greek deity Hermaphroditus became, for reasons that are not entirely clear, strikingly popular in Roman sculpture and wall painting in the latter half of the first century CE. Depicting a fully bisexed human body, these figures have resulted in competing interpretations regarding their purpose, meaning, and effect. As it happens, we also have a text from the Augustan period that purports to explain not only the origin of the intersexed Hermaphroditus, but the production of future bisexed individuals, in Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 4. When discussing the sculptures and wall paintings of Hermaphroditus, as a result, scholars have been inevitably drawn to Ovid's narrative. The pull of Ovid is admittedly almost irresistible, and his reputation as a poet who challenges norms, conventions, and genres makes it attractive to see him as creating room for modern notions of gender fluidity. As Georgia Nugent argued more than thirty years ago, however, Ovid's narrative is, in curious ways, a reductive version of the myth, ‘a paradigmatic example of how what is sexually threatening may be textually recuperated and stabilized’. I wish to reanimate Nugent's arguments here, and to suggest that scholars’ regular invocation of Ovid when interpreting the products of Roman art is a mistake, for two reasons: first, the figure Ovid describes is, in fact, not typical of what we see in Roman sculptures and wall paintings; and second, Ovid presents a version of Hermaphroditus’ gender identity that is deliberately less challenging to the stability of sexual binarism—and to traditional gender roles—than are those material depictions. For those of us who wish to advocate for the rights of intersexed individuals, in other words, Ovid is the wrong champion.","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"67 1","pages":"74 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90613812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"RMU volume 51 issue 1 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2022.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2022.7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"61 1","pages":"f1 - f4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76805561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
One of the commonest clichés in the study of ancient and modern democracy is the claim that the former is ‘direct’, the latter ‘representative’. A few scholars have recently explored areas in which the Classical Athenian democracy had representative features, particularly the magistracies. These studies continue, however, to understand ‘political representation’ according to the definition proposed by the political scientist Hanna Pitkin, that is, as ‘acting [on the part of the political representative] in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them’. In this paper I introduce the insights of the recent ‘constructivist turn’ in studies of political representation to the analysis of Athenian politics in the hope of suggesting, in what will necessarily be a brief and incomplete exercise, how productive this exciting new paradigm can be for understanding the dynamics of ancient democracy. I first lay out the basic tenets of constructivist representation, particularly the notion of the ‘representative claim’ as developed by the political theorist Michael Saward, and argue for their suitability for studying ancient Greek history and political thought. Next, I adapt the model of the representative claim to two episodes of Athenian democratic deliberation, showing how it illuminates processes of demotic will- and identity-formation. I conclude by briefly underscoring how approaching Athenian politics in terms of constructivist notions of representation restores an aesthetic dimension to ancient democratic debate, one that allows us to compare more productively the ‘demos’ of symbouleutic oratory with its counterparts in poetry, sculpture, and other media, namely as a represented object fashioned for creative and rhetorical purposes.
{"title":"REPRESENTING THE DEMOS: ADAPTING INSIGHTS FROM THE CONSTRUCTIVIST TURN IN POLITICAL REPRESENTATION","authors":"Matthew Simonton","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2021.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2021.10","url":null,"abstract":"One of the commonest clichés in the study of ancient and modern democracy is the claim that the former is ‘direct’, the latter ‘representative’. A few scholars have recently explored areas in which the Classical Athenian democracy had representative features, particularly the magistracies. These studies continue, however, to understand ‘political representation’ according to the definition proposed by the political scientist Hanna Pitkin, that is, as ‘acting [on the part of the political representative] in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them’. In this paper I introduce the insights of the recent ‘constructivist turn’ in studies of political representation to the analysis of Athenian politics in the hope of suggesting, in what will necessarily be a brief and incomplete exercise, how productive this exciting new paradigm can be for understanding the dynamics of ancient democracy. I first lay out the basic tenets of constructivist representation, particularly the notion of the ‘representative claim’ as developed by the political theorist Michael Saward, and argue for their suitability for studying ancient Greek history and political thought. Next, I adapt the model of the representative claim to two episodes of Athenian democratic deliberation, showing how it illuminates processes of demotic will- and identity-formation. I conclude by briefly underscoring how approaching Athenian politics in terms of constructivist notions of representation restores an aesthetic dimension to ancient democratic debate, one that allows us to compare more productively the ‘demos’ of symbouleutic oratory with its counterparts in poetry, sculpture, and other media, namely as a represented object fashioned for creative and rhetorical purposes.","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"49 1","pages":"129 - 144"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73126558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Were women imprisoned in classical Athens? To search for an answer to this question in the secondary literature is to be met with deafening silence. Few scholars have examined evidence for the incarceration of women in the ancient Mediterranean, and the little work that has been done remains focused in such marginal (from the vantage of traditional classics departments) areas as Late Antique studies and early Christianity. When classicists speak of prisoners and prisons, we mean men and the ways men control men.
{"title":"IS RED FIGURE THE NEW BLACK? THE IMPRISONMENT OF WOMEN IN CLASSICAL ATHENS","authors":"M. Folch","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2021.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2021.6","url":null,"abstract":"Were women imprisoned in classical Athens? To search for an answer to this question in the secondary literature is to be met with deafening silence. Few scholars have examined evidence for the incarceration of women in the ancient Mediterranean, and the little work that has been done remains focused in such marginal (from the vantage of traditional classics departments) areas as Late Antique studies and early Christianity. When classicists speak of prisoners and prisons, we mean men and the ways men control men.","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"19 1","pages":"45 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72653234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides waits until he has passed the midpoint of Book 1 to introduce an individual speaking ‘character’ into his narrative. He does not do so until the scene of the Congress at Sparta (1.67–88), where it is first ‘the Corinthians’ and then ‘the Athenians’ who plead their cases before the Spartan assembly. One of the functions of this scene is to illustrate the internal division of opinion among the Spartans, and Thucydides now brings two distinct, elite Spartans onstage to voice their conflicting perspectives: King Archidamus addresses his countrymen urging caution (1.80–5), while the ephor Sthenelaidas makes suitably laconic remarks pressing for war (1.86). Before this turning point, Thucydides had carried out his analysis of the war's causes exclusively with reference to foreign rulers and Greek polis-populations (‘the Athenians’, ‘the Spartans’, etc.)—and not to any individual actors or leaders of those poleis, such as Archidamus and Sthenelaidas of Sparta.
{"title":"WAS THE POLIS A PERSON IN CLASSICAL ATHENS? CIVIC BODIES AND CHORAL POLITICS IN THE THEATER","authors":"Johanna Hanink","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2021.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2021.11","url":null,"abstract":"In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides waits until he has passed the midpoint of Book 1 to introduce an individual speaking ‘character’ into his narrative. He does not do so until the scene of the Congress at Sparta (1.67–88), where it is first ‘the Corinthians’ and then ‘the Athenians’ who plead their cases before the Spartan assembly. One of the functions of this scene is to illustrate the internal division of opinion among the Spartans, and Thucydides now brings two distinct, elite Spartans onstage to voice their conflicting perspectives: King Archidamus addresses his countrymen urging caution (1.80–5), while the ephor Sthenelaidas makes suitably laconic remarks pressing for war (1.86). Before this turning point, Thucydides had carried out his analysis of the war's causes exclusively with reference to foreign rulers and Greek polis-populations (‘the Athenians’, ‘the Spartans’, etc.)—and not to any individual actors or leaders of those poleis, such as Archidamus and Sthenelaidas of Sparta.","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"18 1","pages":"145 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75532061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In recent decades, political theorists have significantly revised their understanding of Athenian democratic thinking. By opening up the canon, shifting their focus from abstract principles to democratic practices, and employing an increasingly diverse range of interpretive approaches, they have collectively reconstructed a more robust and multi-faceted account of the Athenian democratic public sphere. Despite its ecumenical ambitions and manifest successes, however, this project has been fettered by a singular focus on language as the medium of democratic politics. As can be seen in the gloss of one of its contributors, this body of work effectively limits the democratic public sphere to ‘the domain in which judgments and public opinion are shaped and formed through speech’. This logocentric demarcation of democratic practice does not harmonize well with our own experience of modern politics, however, where public monuments, political imagery, and civic spaces play a critical role in the formation of political understanding and judgment, as well as starting points for discussion, debate, and disagreement. It seems similarly out of tune with what we know about the ancient Greeks, who demonstrated a readiness to move between visual and verbal content in reflecting on political and ethical life, and who developed the very idea of theôria out of an extension of the process of seeing. If, as political theorists, we can temper our habitual logocentrism and learn to attend more closely to the visual culture of Athenian democracy, we stand to add new dimensions to our collective reconstruction of the democratic public sphere and, in turn, to enhance our understanding of those texts that have long preoccupied our attention.
{"title":"HEROIC DEMOCRACY IN HIGH RELIEF: POLITICAL LEGITIMACY AND MONUMENTAL IMAGERY IN FIFTH-CENTURY ATHENS","authors":"M. Fisher","doi":"10.1017/rmu.2021.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2021.12","url":null,"abstract":"In recent decades, political theorists have significantly revised their understanding of Athenian democratic thinking. By opening up the canon, shifting their focus from abstract principles to democratic practices, and employing an increasingly diverse range of interpretive approaches, they have collectively reconstructed a more robust and multi-faceted account of the Athenian democratic public sphere. Despite its ecumenical ambitions and manifest successes, however, this project has been fettered by a singular focus on language as the medium of democratic politics. As can be seen in the gloss of one of its contributors, this body of work effectively limits the democratic public sphere to ‘the domain in which judgments and public opinion are shaped and formed through speech’. This logocentric demarcation of democratic practice does not harmonize well with our own experience of modern politics, however, where public monuments, political imagery, and civic spaces play a critical role in the formation of political understanding and judgment, as well as starting points for discussion, debate, and disagreement. It seems similarly out of tune with what we know about the ancient Greeks, who demonstrated a readiness to move between visual and verbal content in reflecting on political and ethical life, and who developed the very idea of theôria out of an extension of the process of seeing. If, as political theorists, we can temper our habitual logocentrism and learn to attend more closely to the visual culture of Athenian democracy, we stand to add new dimensions to our collective reconstruction of the democratic public sphere and, in turn, to enhance our understanding of those texts that have long preoccupied our attention.","PeriodicalId":43863,"journal":{"name":"RAMUS-CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE","volume":"74 1","pages":"169 - 188"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85902609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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