The Poetics of Eros in Ancient GreeceThe 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. |
Contents
The Eros of the Melic Poets | 13 |
1 The Actions of Bittersweet Eros | 14 |
2 Physiologies of Erotic Desire | 19 |
3 Strategies of Love | 23 |
4 A Variety of Passions | 29 |
5 Metaphors for the Assuaging of Desire | 33 |
6 The Erotic Charms of Poetry | 36 |
The Eros of Epic Poetry | 39 |
Dionysiac Challenges to Love | 130 |
1 The Institution of Comedy | 133 |
2 The Institution of Tragedy | 141 |
THE SPACES OF EROS | 150 |
The Meadows and Gardens of Legend | 151 |
2 The Orchards and Gardens of Aphrodite | 155 |
3 Flowers Fruits and Cereals | 158 |
The Meadows and Gardens of the Poets | 163 |
2 Scenes of Seduction | 43 |
3 Beguiling Words | 46 |
THE SYMBOLIC PRACTICES OF EROS | 49 |
The Pragmatic Effects of Love Poetry | 51 |
1 The Erotic Functions of Melic Poetry | 52 |
2 The Loves of Alexandrian Writers | 56 |
The Pragmatics of Erotic Iconography | 65 |
2 The Functions of Erotic Images | 72 |
EROS IN SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS | 89 |
Eros in the Masculine The polis | 91 |
1 The Propaedeutic Practices of the Symposium | 93 |
2 Erotic Practices of the Palaestra | 101 |
Eros in the Feminine The Oikos | 110 |
The Hetaira at the Banquet | 111 |
The Young Wife | 116 |
2 The Ideal Domains of the Gods | 165 |
3 Religious Gardens | 168 |
THE METAPHYSICS OF EROS | 173 |
Eros as Demiurge and Philosopher | 175 |
2 Erotic Forms of the Initiation to Beauty | 179 |
3 Love as a Metaphysician | 184 |
Mystic Eros | 190 |
1 Eros in the Orphic Theogonies | 191 |
2 The Mystic Aspects of Eros | 193 |
Eros the Educator | 196 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 199 |
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209 | |