Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Politics 430–380 BC

by Edited by Robin Osborne

• ISBN13: 9780521130585
• ISBN10: 0521130581
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Whatever aspect of Athenian culture one examines, whether it be tragedy and comedy, philosophy, vase painting and sculpture, oratory and rhetoric, law and politics, or social and economic life, the picture looks very different after 400 BC from before 400 BC. Scholars who have previously addressed this question have concentrated on particular areas and come up with explanations, often connected with the psychological effect of the Peloponnesian War, which are very unconvincing as explanations for the whole range of change. This book attempts to look at a wide range of evidence for cultural change at Athens and to examine the ways in which the changes may have been co-ordinated. It is a complement to the examination of the rhetoric of revolution as applied to ancient Greece in Rethinking Revolutions through Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2006).

Table of Contents

Tracing cultural revolution in classical

The nature and implications of Athens' changed social structure and economy

Why the Athenians began to curse

A new political world

Cultural change, space, and the politics of commemoration in Athens

The anatomy of metalepsis: visuality turns around on late fifth-century pots

Constructing the late classical sculptor: style and agency in an age of transition

The politics of precedence: first 'historians' on first 'thalassocrats'

The form of Plato's Republic

Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae and Plato's Republic

Greek tragedy 430-380 BCE

The Sound of Music: modulations and innovations in drama and dithyramb

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