Eros And Polis

Eros and Polis examines how and why Greek theorists treated political passions as erotic. Because of the tiny size of ancient Greek cities, contemporary theory and ideology could conceive of entire communities based on desire. A recurrent aspiration was to transform the polity into one great household that would bind the citizens together through ties of mutual affection. In this study, Paul Ludwig evaluates sexuality, love and civic friendship as sources of political attachment and as bonds of political association. Studying the ancient view of eros recovers a way of looking at political phenomena that provides a bridge, missing in modern thought, between the private and public spheres, between erotic love and civic commitment. Ludwig's study thus has important implications for the theoretical foundations of community.

Ludwig's study thus has important implications for the theoretical foundations of community."--BOOK JACKET.

Arising out of a conference on 'Er s in Ancient Greece', the articles in this volume share a historicizing approach to the conventions and expectations of er s in the context of the polis, in the Archaic and Classical

"Arising out of a conference on 'Erôs in Ancient Greece', the articles in this volume share a historicizing approach to the conventions and expectations of erôs in the context of the polis, in the Archaic and Classical periods of ancient Greece. The articles focus on (post-Homeric) Archaic and Classical poetic genres - namely lyric poetry, tragedy, and comedy - and some philosophical texts by Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. They pursue a variety of issues, including: the connection between homosexual erôs and politics; sexual practices that fell outside societal norms (aristocratic homosexuality, chastity); the roles of sôphrosynê (self-control) and akrasia (incontinence) in erotic relationships; and the connection between erôs and other socially important emotions such as charis, philia, and storgê. The exploration of such issues from a variety of standpoints, and through a range of texts, allows us to place erôs as an emotion in its socio-political context."--Book cover.

This original and wide-ranging collection of essays offers, for the first time, a comprehensive examination of the political dimensions of that madcap comic poet Aristophanes. Rejecting the claim that Aristophanes is little more than a mere comedian, the contributors to this fascinating volume demonstrate that Aristophanes deserves to be placed in the ranks of the greatest Greek political thinkers. As these essays reveal, all of Aristophanes' plays treat issues of fundamental political importance, from war and peace, poverty and wealth, the relation between the sexes, demagoguery and democracy to the role of philosophy and poetry in political society. Accessible to students as well as scholars, The Political Theory of Aristophanes can be utilized easily in the classroom, but at the same time serve as a valuable source for those conducting more advanced research. Whether the field is political philosophy, classical studies, history, or literary criticism, this work will make it necessary to reconceptualize how we understand this great Athenian poet and force us to recognize the political ramifications and underpinnings of his uproarious comedies.

The 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.

Volume 5 of the journal Glossator. Contents: What Separates the Birth of Twins - Jordan Kirk Prosopopeia to Prosopagnosia: Dante on Facebook - Scott Wilson When You Call My Name - Karmen MacKendrick All That Remains Unnoticed I Adore: Spencer Reece's Addresses - Eileen A. Joy Plato's Symposium and Commentary for Love - David Hancock Dreaming Death: the Onanistic and Self-Annihilative Principles of Love in Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet - Gary J. Shipley On Not Loving Everyone: Comments on Jean-Luc Nancy's "L'amour en éclats [Shattered Love]" - Mathew Abbott The Grace of Hermeneutics - Michael Edward Moore Tearsong: Valentine Visconti's Inverted Stoicism - Anna Klosowska