Hellenistic artworks are celebrated for innovations such as narrative, characterization, and description. The most striking examples are works associated with the Hellenistic courts. Their revolutionary appearance is usually attributed to Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East, the start of the Hellenistic kingdoms, and Greek-Eastern interactions. In Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art, Kristen Seaman offers a new approach to Hellenistic art by investigating an internal development in Greek cultural production, notably, advances in rhetoric. Rhetorical education taught kings, artists, and courtiers how to be Greek, giving them a common intellectual and cultural background from which they approached art. Seaman explores how rhetorical techniques helped artists and their royal patrons construct Hellenism through their innovative art in the scholarly atmospheres of Pergamon and Alexandria. Drawing upon artistic, literary, and historical evidence, this interdisciplinary study will be of interest to students and scholars in art and archaeology, Classics, and ancient history.
Author(s): Kristen Seaman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 206
City: Cambridge
Cover
Half-title
Title page
Copyright information
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Map
Figures
Color Plates
Preface
Abbreviations and Translations
Plates
Chapter One Rhetoric, Innovation, and the Courts
Introduction
The Role of Rhetorical Education
The Role of Artists
The Role of the Courts
Hellenistic Art around the Mediterranean
The Remainder of This Book: Art and Rhetoric at Pergamon and Alexandria
Chapter Two Narrative in the Telephos Frieze
Introduction
Contextualizing the Frieze
Reconstructing the Frieze
Diegema
Bios
Why Telephos?
Conclusion: A Synkrisis?
Chapter Three Personification in the Archelaos Relief
Introduction
Origins
Personifications on the Relief
Chronos and Oikoumene
The Iliad and the Odyssey
The Nature of Literary Production
Prosopopoiia
Conclusion: An Enkomion?
Chapter Four Ekphrasis in Sosos's Unswept Room Mosaic
Introduction
Pergamene Context
Ekphrasis
Time and Ekphrasis in the Dining Room
Trashing the King
Conclusion: A Greek Sympotic Game?
Chapter Five Conclusion
Notes
1 Rhetoric, Innovation, and the Courts
2 Narrative in the Telephos Frieze
3 Personification in the Archelaos Relief
4 Ekphrasis in Sosos's Unswept Room Mosaic
5 Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
