Cosmology and the Polis: The Social Construction of Space and Tome in the Tragedies of Aeschylus

by: Seaford, R.

Price: 37,10 EURO

(in stock)

This book further develops Professor Seaford's innovative work on the study of ritual and money in the developing Greek polis. It employs the concept of the chronotope, which refers to the phenomenon whereby the spatial and temporal frameworks explicit or implicit in a text have the same structure, and uncovers various such chronotopes in Homer, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Presocratic philosophy and in particular the tragedies of Aeschylus. Mikhail Bakhtin's pioneering use of the chronotope was in literary analysis. This study by contrast derives the variety of chronotopes manifest in Greek texts from the variety of socially integrative practices in the developing polis - notably reciprocity, collective ritual and monetised exchange. In particular, the Oresteia of Aeschylus embodies the reassuring absorption of the new and threatening monetised chronotope into the traditional chronotope that arises from collective ritual with its aetiological myth. This argument includes the first ever demonstration of the profound affinities between Aeschylus and the (Presocratic) philosophy of his time.

Adopts a socio-economic perspective to propose a new way of understanding the 'Greek miracle'
Transcends the usual boundaries between the study of religion, cosmology, history, economics and drama
Close readings of the ancient texts are put into a broader perspective

Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I. The Social Construction of Space, Time and Cosmology:
1. Homer: the reciprocal chronotope
2. Demeter Hymn: the aetiological chronotope
3. From reciprocity to money
Part II. Dionysiac Festivals:
4. Royal household and public festival
5. Aetiological chronotope and dramatic mimesis
6. Monetisation and tragedy
Part III. Limit and the Unlimited in Confrontational Space:
7. Telos and the unlimitedness of money
8. Suppliants
9. Septem
10. Confrontational space in Oresteia
11. The unlimited in Oresteia
12. Persians
Part IV. The Unity of Opposites:
13. Form-parallelism and the unity of opposites
14. Aeschylus and Herakleitos
15. From the unity of opposites to their differentiation
Part V. Cosmology of the Integrated Polis:
16. Metaphysics and the polis in Pythagoreanism
17. Pythagoreanism in Aeschylus
18. Household, cosmos and polis
Appendix: was there a skēnē for all the extant plays of Aeschylus?

Cosmology and the Polis: The Social Construction of Space and Tome in the Tragedies of Aeschylus

by: Seaford, R.

• ISBN-13: 9781107470729 / 978-1-107-47072-9
• ISBN-03: 1107470722 / 1-107-47072-2
• Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014

Price: 37,10 EURO

(in stock)