The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece offers the first comprehensive
inquiry into the deity of sexual love, a power that permeated daily
Greek life. Avoiding Foucault's philosophical paradigm of
dominance/submission, Claude Calame uses an anthropological and
linguistic approach to re-create indigenous categories of erotic love.
He maintains that Eros, the joyful companion of Aphrodite, was a
divine figure around which poets constructed a physiology of desire
that functioned in specific ways within a network of social relations.
Calame begins by showing how poetry and iconography gave a rich
variety of expression to the concept of Eros, then delivers a history
of the deity's roles within social and political institutions, and
concludes with a discussion of an Eros-centered metaphysics. Calame's
treatment of archaic and classical Greek institutions reveals Eros at
work in initiation rites and celebrations, educational practices, the
Dionysiac theater of tragedy and comedy, and in real and imagined
spatial settings. For men, Eros functioned particularly in the
symposium and the gymnasium, places where men and boys interacted and
where future citizens were educated. The household was the setting
where girls, brides, and adult wives learned their erotic roles--as
such it provides the context for understanding female rites of passage
and the problematics of sexuality in conjugal relations. Through
analyses of both Greek language and practices, Calame offers a fresh,
subtle reading of relations between individuals as well as a
quick-paced and fascinating overview of Eros in Greek society at
large.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400849154
Publisert
2013
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter