Overview

By the end of the Archaic period, Greek sanctuaries were bursting with dedications, including many that bore epigrams. This study views dedications comprehensively as sites of ritual efficacy, and in particular it recovers epigrams' reflections of and contributions to that efficacy and restores them to an important place in the panorama of Greek religious practice. In order to reconstruct the Archaic experience of reading and viewing, the book draws on studies of traditional poetic language as resonant with immanent meaning, early Greek poetry as socially and religiously effective performance, and viewing art as an active response of aesthetic appreciation. It argues that reading epigrams while viewing dedications generated effects of religious ritual and poetic performance, and that visual and verbal representation of the dedicator's act of offering associated that rite with similar effects, thereby framing the experiences of readers and viewers as reperformances of the earlier occasion.

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9781108984850

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Reviews

'Day's profound knowledge of the dedicatory texts and their context, together with his expertise in the field of the verse inscriptions, makes this study an enlightening, thorough and highly recommendable read.' Arctos

Author Information

Joseph W. Day is Professor of Classics at Wabash College, Indiana and frequent Senior Associate Member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. He is the author of The Glory of Athens: The Popular Tradition in Aelius Aristides (1980); but subsequently he has focused on earlier inscribed Greek epigram, contributing to many journals and edited collections on that subject.

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