Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State

by: Seaford, R.

Price: 119,00 EURO

1 copy in stock

Reciprocity and Ritual
Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State
Richard Seaford
Clarendon Press

This is an exciting and entirely new synthesis, combining anthropology, political and social history, and the close reading of central Greek ...

Description
This is an exciting and entirely new synthesis, combining anthropology, political and social history, and the close reading of central Greek texts, to account for two the most significant hallmarks in Homeric epic and Athenian tragedy: the representation of ritual and codes of reciprocity.

Both genres are pervaded by these features, yet each treats them in entirely different ways. In this book, Dr Seaford shows that these differences cannot be accounted for in merely literary terms, but require a historical explanation. Homer in its final form is a product of the city state at an earlier historical stage than is tragedy. It is the growth of the city-state and its concomitant developments - in particular of law and of money, as well as in the practice of ritual - that provide a key to the crystallization of the Homeric narrative tradition, to the specificity of tragedy, and to certain features of the thought of the period. In the case of reciprocity, again - whether the positive reciprocity associated with gift-giving or the hostile reciprocity of revenge - the systematic distinctions between Homer and tragedy can be explained only from a historical perspective. In its characteristic movement tradegy reflects and confirms the transition from one kind of society towards another: from a network of reciprocial relations, characteristic of societies where the state is weak or absent, to the organization of citizens around a single centre or series of centres, the institutions and cults of the city-state.

Challenging, thoroughly lucid, and at times controversial, this lively and original work is the first to attempt to understand the development of early Greek literature from the perspective of state-formation. It should interest all serious students and scholars of both the literature and the history of classical Greece.

1. Polis, Household, and Reciprocity in Homer
2. Marriage, Sacrifice, and Reciprocity in Homer
3. Death Ritual and Reciprocal Violence in the Polis
4. Collective Death Ritual
5. Death Ritual in the Iliad
6. The Transformation of Reciprocity
7. Dionysos and the Polis
8. Transformations of the Dionysiac Sacrifice
9. The Dionysiac in Homer and in Tragedy
10. Reciprocity and Ritual in Tragedy

Subjects:
Civilization
Criticism, interpretation, etc
Cults
Dionysos (Divinité grecque) Culte
Dionysos (divinité grecque)
Dionysus (Greek deity)
Dionysus (Greek deity) Cult
Epic poetry, Greek
Epic poetry, Greek History and criticism
Épopées grecques Histoire et critique
Greece
Greece Civilization
Greece In literature
Greek drama (Tragedy)
Greek drama (Tragedy) History and criticism
Greek literature
Greek literature History and criticism
Greek poetry
Grèce Civilisation
Grèce dans la littérature
Homer
Homer Criticism and interpretation
Homère Et la tragédie
Homère, (08.?-08.? av. J.-C.) Critique et interprétation
Literature
Literature and anthropology
Literature and anthropology Greece
Literature and state Greece
Littérature et anthropologie Grèce
Littérature grecque Histoire et critique
Poésie épique grecque Histoire et critique
Ritual in literature
Rituel dans la littérature
Stadstaten
Tragedies
Tragédie grecque Histoire et critique

Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State

by: Seaford, R.

• ISBN-13: 9780198149491 / 978-0-19-814949-1
• ISBN-03: 0198149492 / 0-19-814949-2
• Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994

Price: 119,00 EURO

1 copy in stock