A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics

The first of its kind, A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics presents a synoptic view of the arts, which crosses traditional boundaries and explores the aesthetic experience of the ancients across a range of media—oral, aural, visual, and literary.

• Investigates the many ways in which the arts were experienced and conceptualized in the ancient world
• Explores the aesthetic experience of the ancients across a range of media, treating literary, oral, aural, and visual arts together in a single volume
• Presents an integrated perspective on the major themes of ancient aesthetics which challenges traditional demarcations
• Raises questions about the similarities and differences between ancient and modern ways of thinking about the place of art in society

Illustrations viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xiv

Introduction 1
Pierre Destrée and Penelope Murray

Part I Art in Context 15

1 Greece 17
Richard P. Martin

2 Figures of the Poet in Greek Epic and Lyric 31
Deborah Steiner

3 The Hellenistic World 47
Graham Zanker

4 Rome 68
Thomas Habinek

5 Music and Dance in Greece and Rome 81
Eleonora Rocconi

6 Greek Sculpture 94
Rosemary Barrow

7 Painting and Private Art Collections in Rome 109
Agnès Rouveret

8 Architecture and Society 128
Catherine Saliou

Part II Reflecting on Art 141

9 Literary Criticism and the Poet’s Autonomy 143
Andrew Ford

10 Poetic Inspiration 158
Penelope Murray

11 The Canons of Style 175
Jeffrey Walker

12 Sense and Sensation in Music 188
Armand D’Angour

13 Dance and Aesthetic Perception 204
Anastasia]Erasmia Peponi

14 Greek Painting and the Challenge of Mimes̄ is 218
Hariclia Brecoulaki

15 Ways of Looking at Greek Vases 237
François Lissarrague

16 Displaying Sculpture in Rome 248
Thea Ravasi

17 Perceiving Colors 262
M. Michela Sassi

18 The Beauties of Architecture 274
Edmund Thomas

19 Stylistic Landscapes 291
Nancy Worman

20 Conceptualizing the (Visual) “Arts” 307
Michael Squire

Part III Aesthetic Issues 327

21 Mimesis 329
Paul Woodruff

22 Fiction 341
Stephen Halliwell

23 Imagination 354
Anne Sheppard

24 Beauty 366
David Konstan

25 Unity, Wholeness, and Proportion 381
Malcolm Heath

26 The Sublime 393
James I. Porter

27 Poikilia 406
Adeline Grand]Clément

28 Wonder 422
Christine Hunzinger

29 Tragic Emotions 438
Christof Rapp

30 Laughter 455
Ralph M. Rosen

31 Pleasure 472
Pierre Destrée

32 Art and Morality 486
Elizabeth Asmis

33 Art and Value 505
Michael Silk

Index of Subjects 518

Index of Ancient Texts Discussed 527

"The editors conceive of “ancient aesthetics” broadly, as encompassing “the multifarious ways in which the arts were experienced and conceptualized in the ancient world” (p. 1). The thirty-three chapters that make up the volume are similarly wide-ranging in focus and disciplinary approach, while the insights afforded by their interconnections show the value of treating ancient aesthetics as a unified field of inquiry. Most of the essays would serve as excellent starting points for research on their topics, and several make important new contributions to scholarship. This book is now the most comprehensive resource available for helping us understand how the Greeks and Romans thought about art."

Christopher C. Raymond, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017

THE EDITORS

Pierre Destrée is Associate Researcher at the FNRS and Associate Professor at the University of Louvain, Belgium, where he teaches ancient philosophy. He is the author of a French translation of Aristotle's Poetics (2014) and editor of Plato and the Poets (with F.G. Herrmann, 2011), Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths (with C. Collobert and F. Gonzalez, 2012), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Politics (with M. Deslauriers, 2013), and What Is Up to Us? Causality and Responsibility in Ancient Philosophy (with R. Salles and M. Zingano, 2014).

Penelope Murray was Senior Lecturer and a founding member of the Department of Classics at the University of Warwick, UK, before retiring in 2008. She continues to work on early Greek poetry and poetics, on philosophical responses to Athenian song-culture, especially the views of Plato, and on ancient literary criticism. Her publications include Genius: The History of an Idea (Blackwell, 1989), Plato on Poetry (1996), Classical Literary Criticism (2000), and Music and the Muses: The Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City (edited with P. Wilson, 2004).

A COMPANION TO ANCIENT AESTHETICS

EDITED BY PIERRE DESTRÉE AND PENELOPE MURRAY

A companion to ancient aesthetics responds to, and reflects on, the arts in the ancient world. the history of western thinking about such matters goes back to the greeks, when the arts, in one form or another, were a central feature of public life, evaluated and discussed long before alexander baumgarten published his Aesthetica in 1750 and established aesthetics as a distinct philosophical discipline. greek speculations on the nature of artistic experience have profoundly shaped our culture, and this volume explores the many ways in which the arts were experienced and conceptualized in the ancient world.

The contributors take a broad view in their discussions, moving away from analysis of the classical antecedents of eighteenth-century aesthetics to discuss ancient aesthetics as a subject in its own right. the first of its kind, the volume presents a synoptic view of the arts, which crosses traditional boundaries and explores the aesthetic experience of the ancients across a range of media – oral, aural, visual, and literary. the essays present an integrated perspective on the major themes of ancient aesthetics that challenges traditional demarcations and raises questions about the similarities and differences between ancient and modern ways of thinking about the place of art in society.