Aesthetic Experiences and Classical Antiquity The Significance of Form in Narratives and Pictures

In this bold book, Jonas Grethlein proposes a new dialogue between the fields of Classics and aesthetics. Ancient material, he argues, has the capacity to challenge and re-orientate current debates. Comparisons with modern art and literature help to balance the historicism of classical scholarship with transcultural theoretical critique. Grethlein discusses ancient narratives and pictures in order to explore the nature of aesthetic experience. While our responses to both narratives and pictures are vicarious, the 'as-if' on which they are premised is specifically shaped by the form of the representation. Form emerges as a key to how narratives and pictures constitute an important means of engaging with experience. Combining theoretical reflections with close readings, this book will appeal to art historians as well as to textual scholars.

Prologue: the Sirens' song; 1. Introduction: the 'as-if' of aesthetic experience. Part I. Narratives: 2. Narratives: experiencing time; 3. The reconfiguration of time in Heliodorus' Ethiopica; 4. Beyond Heliodorus: Francois Ozon, Dans la maison; Part II. Pictures: 5. Pictures: the detached gaze; 6. Seeing (in) ancient vases; 7. Beyond ancient vase-painting: Rabih Mroue, The Fall of a Hair; Epilogue: the Sirens in Los Angeles.

Jonas Grethlein holds the Chair in Greek Literature in the Department of Classics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany. His authored publications include The Greeks and their Past: Poetry, Oratory and History in the Fifth-Century BCE (Cambridge, 2010), Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography: Futures Past from Herodotus to Augustine (Cambridge, 2013), and Die Odyssee. Homer und die Kunst des Erzählens (2017). He is co-editor of Time and Narrative in Ancient Historiography: The 'Plupast' from Herodotus to Appian (Cambridge, 2012).