This essay analyses the contribution of the knowledge of Greek culture in Antiquity for Mikhail Bakhtin’s achievement. It shows how the Socratic dialogue and serious-comic genres contributed to forming the novel – according do Bakhtin’s conceptions – by developing its carnavalized line. It concludes that, although Bakhtin was not properly a Hellenist, he has contributed to Ancient Greece studies, by exploring the literary creativity of Hellenist period.

Paideia– i.e. Greek culture, comprising, amongst other things, language, literature, philosophy and medicine – was a constituent component of the social identity of the elite of the Roman empire: as a number of influential studies on the Second Sophistic have recently shown, leading members of society presented themselves as such by their possession and deployment of cultural capital, for example by performing oratory, writing philosophy or showcasing medical interventions. As the ‘common language’ of the men ruling the various (...) parts of the empire, Greek culture became a characteristic of, and thus ade factocondition for, leading socio-political positions. Whilst most elite men would have taken for granted a good cultural education no less than a leading position, an outstanding command of the classical Greek language, literature and tradition as displayed in epideictic performances allowed some orators, philosophers and doctors to move distinctively up the social ladder, sometimes reaching the ears of, and thereby wielding influence over, the emperor himself. (shrink)

Werner Jaeger's classic three-volume work, originally published in 1939, is now available in paperback. Paideia, the shaping of Greek character through a union of civilization, tradition, literature, and philosophy is the basis for Jaeger's evaluation of Hellenic culture.Volume I describes the foundation, growth, and crisis of Greek culture during the archaic and classical epochs, ending with the collapse of the Athenian empire. The second and third volumes of the work deal with the intellectual history of ancient (...) Greece in the Age of Plato, the 4th century B.C.--the age in which Greece lost everything that is valued in this world--state, power, liberty--but still clung to the concept of paideia. As its last great poet, Menander summarized the primary role of this ideal in Greek culture when he said: "The possession which no one can take away from man is paideia.". (shrink)

" The project of Greek culture in its heroic period was the creation of the perfect state-a goal that seemed within reach in the Athens of the fifth century B.C. But with the fall of Athens that prospect evaporated, and the result, which ..

Werner Jaeger's classic three-volume work, originally published in 1939, is now available in paperback. Paideia, the shaping of Greek character through a union of civilization, tradition, literature, and philosophy is the basis for Jaeger's evaluation of Hellenic culture.Volume I describes the foundation, growth, and crisis of Greek culture during the archaic and classical epochs, ending with the collapse of the Athenian empire. The second and third volumes of the work deal with the intellectual history of ancient (...) Greece in the Age of Plato, the 4th century B.C.--the age in which Greece lost everything that is valued in this world--state, power, liberty--but still clung to the concept of paideia. As its last great poet, Menander summarized the primary role of this ideal in Greek culture when he said: "The possession which no one can take away from man is paideia.". (shrink)

Werner Jaeger's classic three-volume work, originally published in 1939, is now available in paperback. Paideia, the shaping of Greek character through a union of civilization, tradition, literature, and philosophy is the basis for Jaeger's evaluation of Hellenic culture.Volume I describes the foundation, growth, and crisis of Greek culture during the archaic and classical epochs, ending with the collapse of the Athenian empire. The second and third volumes of the work deal with the intellectual history of ancient (...) Greece in the Age of Plato, the 4th century B.C.--the age in which Greece lost everything that is valued in this world--state, power, liberty--but still clung to the concept of paideia. As its last great poet, Menander summarized the primary role of this ideal in Greek culture when he said: "The possession which no one can take away from man is paideia.". (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to situate the expression of the secular culture of the Enlightenment in the Greek context into the broader intellectual and spiritual tradition defined by the Greek language. The analysis points at the breaks introduced into this tradition by the Enlightenment (in historical and geographical conceptions, in scientific and political thought and in the understanding of the classics) but it also argues that despite its novelty the Enlightenment shared a considerable heritage with the (...) broader Orthodox religious culture into which it was transmitted in Southeastern Europe. This point is illustrated by reference to biographical evidence, supplied by the life histories of three important exponents of the Enlightenment writing in Greek (E. Voulgaris, Iosipos Moisiodax and N. Doukas). The complex relation between the Enlightenment and earlier Greek intellectual traditions is underlined in conclusion. ☆ An earlier version of this paper was presented as the concluding lecture of the conference “The Greek world under Ottoman and Western domination, 15th–19th centuries”, held at the Onassis Cultural Centre in New York on 29 April 2006. The original version appeared in the proceedings of the conference, published under the same title in 2008. The version published here has been extensively revised, updated and expanded. In revising the earlier version I had the benefit of the comments and suggestions of Professor Ihor Sevchenko, to whom I am deeply grateful. I am also indebted to Richard Whatmore for his encouragement. (shrink)

Werner Jaeger's highly-acclaimed work treats paideia, the shaping of Greek character, as the basis for study of Hellenism as a whole, to explain the interaction between the historical process by which Greek character was formed and the intellectual process by which they constructed their ideal of the human personality.

" The final volume of Werner Jaeger's three-volume Paideia begins at the same point as its predecessor--the fall of the Periclean empire--but pursues a different line of intellectual development.

This book is intended for Prizes won etc.

This book is intended for Prizes won etc.

Within the pantheon of the great television series of recent decades, "The Wire" (D. Simon & E. Burns, HBO, 2002-2006) undoubtedly occupies a prominent place for critics and audiences. “The Wire”, disguised as a police thriller, is a serial story that stands out for its cyclical structure, tragic archetypes and a choral look that makes the difference from the rest of current television content. Three characteristics (the corality, the tragedy, and the cyclical time) that make up the essence of (...) class='Hi'>Greek theater. And as soon as we start analyzing The Wire we see what is hidden in the characters and plots of one of the most prestigious series in history owe their essence to the cosmogony and Greek mythology, the root of all our culture. (shrink)

The proposition that man is the only animal capable of laughter is at least as old as Aristotle . In a strictly physical sense, this is probably false; but it is undoubtedly true that as a psychologically expressive and socially potent means of communication, laughter is a distinctively human phenomenon. Any attempt to study sets of cultural attitudes towards laughter, or the particular types of personal conduct which these attitudes shape and influence, must certainly adopt a wider perspective than a (...) narrowly physical definition of laughter will allow. Throughout this paper, which will attempt to establish part of the framework of such a cultural analysis for the Greek world of, broadly speaking, the archaic and classical periods, ‘laughter’ must be taken, by a convenient synecdoche, to encompass the many behavioural and affective patterns which are associated with, or which characteristically give scope for, uses of laughter in the literal sense of the word. My concern, then, is with a whole network of feelings, concepts and actions; and my argument will try to elucidate the practices within which laughter fulfils a recognizable function in Greek societies, as well as the dominant ideas and values which Greek thought brings to bear upon these practices. The results of the enquiry will, I believe, give us some reason to accept a rapprochement between the universalist assumption for which my epigraph from Johnson speaks and the recognition of cultural specificity in laughter's uses for which many anthropologists would argue, as emphatically asserted, from a Marxizing point of view, in the quotation from Vladimir Propp. (shrink)

The proposition that man is the only animal capable of laughter is at least as old as Aristotle. In a strictly physical sense, this is probably false; but it is undoubtedly true that as a psychologically expressive and socially potent means of communication, laughter is a distinctively human phenomenon. Any attempt to study sets of cultural attitudes towards laughter, or the particular types of personal conduct which these attitudes shape and influence, must certainly adopt a wider perspective than a narrowly (...) physical definition of laughter will allow. Throughout this paper, which will attempt to establish part of the framework of such a cultural analysis for the Greek world of, broadly speaking, the archaic and classical periods, ‘laughter’ must be taken, by a convenient synecdoche, to encompass the many behavioural and affective patterns which are associated with, or which characteristically give scope for, uses of laughter in the literal sense of the word. My concern, then, is with a whole network of feelings, concepts and actions; and my argument will try to elucidate the practices within which laughter fulfils a recognizable function in Greek societies, as well as the dominant ideas and values which Greek thought brings to bear upon these practices. The results of the enquiry will, I believe, give us some reason to accept a rapprochement between the universalist assumption for which my epigraph from Johnson speaks and the recognition of cultural specificity in laughter's uses for which many anthropologists would argue, as emphatically asserted, from a Marxizing point of view, in the quotation from Vladimir Propp. (shrink)

Renowned scholar of Ancient Greek Martin Ostwald explains, for a modern audience, the terms by which the ancient Greeks saw and lived their lives—and ...

The literary stock of Achilles Tatius has been increasing steadily in value since 1964, when an article about his romanceLeucippe and Cleitophonin an encyclopedia of world literature began, ‘Das Werk weist alle Mängel seines Genres samt einigen zusätzlichen eigenen auf.’ To be sure,Leucippe and Cleitophonremains among the last and probably least read of the Greek romances; yet in the last decades critics have begun to draw attention to original and effective aspects of its composition. As is usually the case, (...) this revaluation has been accompanied not so much by the discovery of new virtues which had previously been neglected, but rather by the redescription as virtues of what had always counted as vices. Thus Cleitophon's lack of heroism can now be welcomed as comic realism, the implausibly melodramatic twists of the plot praised as selfconsciously theatrical ironies, and the baroque frigidity of the style counted as loony metaphysical wit or as BrechtianEntfremdung seffekt. (shrink)