Title Frontiers of pleasure : models of aesthetic response in archaic and classical Greek thought / Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi

Published New York : Oxford University Press, 2012

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Description 1 online resource (216 pages) : illustrations Contents Concepts and terms -- Tranquility -- Weeping -- Fusion -- Eros I -- Eros II -- Coda Summary This book calls into question a number of influential modern notions regarding aesthetics by going back to the very beginnings of aesthetic thought in Greece and raising critical issues about Greek conceptions of how one responds to the beautiful. The analysis centers on a dominant aspect of beauty—the aural—associated with a highly influential sector of culture that comprised both poetry and instrumental music, the “activity of the Muses” named mousikê. The main argument relies on a series of close-grained readings of literary and philosophical texts, from Homer and Plato to Kant, Joyce, and Proust. Through detailed attention to such scenes as Odysseus’s encounter with the Sirens and Hermes’s playing of his newly invented lyre for his brother Apollo, the book demonstrates that the most telling moments in the conceptualization of the aesthetic are found in the Greeks’ debates and struggles over intense models of auditory pleasure. Despite a recent rebirth of interest in aesthetics, extensive discussion of this key cluster of topics has been lacking. Unlike current tendencies to treat poetry as an early, imperfect mode of meditating upon such issues, the author claims that Greek poetry and philosophy employed equally complex, albeit different, ways of articulating notions of aesthetic response. As a whole, the book discusses alternative modes of understanding aesthetics in its entirety Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and indexes Notes English; and Greek passages with English translation English; and Greek passages with English translation Print version record Subject Poetry, Ancient -- History and criticism Aesthetics, Classical -- Greece -- History Arts and society -- Greece Music -- To 500 -- Philosophy and aesthetics Philosophy, Ancient. BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Literary. Aesthetics, Classical Arts and society Music -- Philosophy and aesthetics Philosophy, Ancient Poetry, Ancient Greece Genre/Form Electronic books Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780199798391 0199798397 0199950393 9780199950393

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