Bodily Arts

by Hawhee, Debra

• ISBN13: 9780292705845
• ISBN10: 0292705840
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-31
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

The role of athletics in ancient Greece extended well beyond the realms of kinesiology, competition, and entertainment. In teaching and philosophy, athletic practices overlapped with rhetorical ones and formed a shared mode of knowledge production. Bodily Arts examines this intriguing intersection, offering an important context for understanding the attitudes of ancient Greeks toward themselves and their environment.In classical society, rhetoric was an activity, one that was in essence "performed." Detailing how athletics came to be rhetoric's "twin art" in the bodily aspects of learning and performance, Bodily Arts draws on diverse orators and philosophers such as Isocrates, Demosthenes, and Plato, as well as medical treatises and a wealth of artifacts from the time, including statues and vases.Debra Hawhee's insightful study spotlights the notion of a classical gymnasium as the location for a habitual "mingling" of athletic and rhetorical performances, and the use of ancient athletic instruction to create rhetorical training based on rhythm, repetition, and response. Presenting her data against the backdrop of a broad cultural perspective rather than a narrow disciplinary one, Hawhee presents a pioneering interpretation of Greek civilization from the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BCE by observing its citizens in action.

Table of Contents

A Note on Texts and Translations	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction: Shipwreck	3	(12)
Contesting Virtuosity: Agonism and the Production of Arete	15	(29)
Sophistic Metis: An Intelligence of the Body	44	(21)
Kairotic Bodies	65	(21)
Phusiopoiesis: The Arts of Training	86	(23)
Gymnasium I: The Space of Training	109	(24)
Gymnasium II: The Bodily Rhythms of Habit	133	(29)
The Visible Spoken: Rhetoric, Athletics, and the Circulation of Honor	162	(27)
Conclusion	189	(8)
Notes	197	(10)
Works Cited	207	(10)
Index	217