Memory, Performance and Pleasure in Greek Rituals (in Ritual Dynamics, Wiesbaden 2010) (original) (raw)
2010, Michaels, A. (ed.), "Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual"
Studio - condotto attraverso l'analisi dei testi e delle forme innologiche presenti in tragedia - del rapporto tra partecipazione a un rituale e il piacere che deve essere generato a favore del dio celebrato, e sul ruolo della memoria per il corretto svolgimento delle pratiche rituali. Emerge una complessa rete di relazioni di reciprocità, e una serie di effetti sullo statuto dei rituali nella documentazione letteraria ed epigrafica. Esempi da: Aesch. Eum; Sept;Eur. Iph Aul; Eur. Ion. Una breve analisi di FD II, XI 192 chiude il lavoro. In Ancient Greece, ritual is associated with memory and pleasure through different and interesting connections, which deserve attention and further exploration. I shall be considering the threefold relationship between the role of memory (a particular kind of memory, as we shall see), the performance of a ritual, and the action of giving and sharing pleasure. More particularly, what we may call “ritual pleasure” seems to be a crucial element for the celebration itself, not only as an emotion shared among the participants in the ritual, but also as a feeling perceived by the god celebrated.
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Although concepts of performance theory were successfully applied to the study of rituals in the social sciences, research on ancient Greek ritual practice was not affected by such approaches to any significant degree. To a large extent, this might be due to the fragmentary character of the available evidence, consisting mainly of material remains of ritual activities in the archaeological record, and representations of rituals in art. In the absence of detailed descriptions of ritual practice in literary sources, it is therefore difficult to reconstruct whole ritual sequences, which would greatly facilitate their interpretation as performative acts. Criticizing a view of ritual as primarily non-verbal and action orientated, this paper emphasizes the role of speech in Greek rituals and examines some of the evidence for mimetic and narrative ritual performances. Drawing on the example of the Athenian Oschophoria, the performative aspect of a specific ritual is investigated. In addition, the simplified interpretation of the Oschophoria as an “ephebes’ rite” is dismissed in favour of a more balanced reading that adequately considers not only the eminent agricultural aspect of the festival but also the different groups of participants.
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. Ginzburg (ed.), A Historical Approach to Casuistry. Norms and Exceptions in a Comparative Perspective, London: Bloomsbury, 47-64 , 2019
What happens when rituals are transgressed? When a ritual works normally, we hear very little about the religious, social, or cultural expectations surrounding its performance. When it fails or is infringed upon, however, the anomaly highlights accepted norms and reveals what is usually hidden or taken for granted. In this chapter, I will frst look at the etymology and semantic development of the term “ritual,” since the former has only recently become clearer and the latter is still a matter of ongoing research (see the section Ritual: Etymology and Semantic Development). Next, I will look at two case studies of ritual transgressions taken from famous festivals in ancient Greece—the Tesmophoria and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Finally, I draw some conclusions based on these examples.
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Un aspecto clave del crecimiento exponencial de la popularidad de Teseo entre los siglos VI y IV a.C. fue su creciente asociación con varios festivales y actos ritualizados. Fue especialmente el episodio de la aventura cretense el que dio forma a estos ritos. En sus reivindicadas y enfatizadas etiologías teseicas, estos festivales se revelan como mecanismos esenciales mediante los cuales se generaba la memoria cultural colectiva del héroe. Más allá de abordar simplemente el ritual como un objeto de expresión mnemónica, este artículo analiza los métodos contingentes y reconstructivos mediante los que se produce la memoria colectiva. Además, al examinar la experiencia corporeizada del recuerdo de Teseo, podemos valorar sobre un terreno mucho más firme su potencia creadora de diversas identidades atenienses.
Greek Memories: Theories and Practices. (TOC)
Greek Memories. Theories and Practices, 2019
Greek Memories aims to identify and examine the central concepts underlying the theories and practices of memory in the Greek world, from the archaic period to late antiquity, across all the main literary genres, and to trace some fundamental changes in these theories and practices. It explores the interaction and development of different ‘disciplinary’ approaches to memory in ancient Greece, which will enable a fuller and deeper understanding of the whole phenomenon, and of its specific manifestations. This collection of papers contributes to enriching the current scholarly discussion by re-focusing it on the question of how various theories and practices of memory, recollection, and forgetting play themselves out in specific texts and authors from ancient Greece, within a wide chronological span (from the Homeric poems to Plotinus), and across a broad range of genres and disciplines (epic and lyric poetry, tragedy, comedy, historiography, philosophy and scientific prose treatises).
2019. Two Notes on the Collection of Greek Ritual Norms: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Axon, 2019
Launched in 2017, the Collection of Greek Ritual Norms provides an openaccess commentary on selected ancient Greek inscriptions which define parameters of ritual practice. These short notes address two issues superficially concerning the name of the Collection of Greek Ritual Norms, but more deeply engaging with what one means by the notion of 'ritual norm' and what one implies in considering such norms 'Greek'. A term like 'cult regulation' might conveniently be used to replace the misnomer 'sacred law', but this encompasses a similarly broad and miscellaneous group of inscriptions. By contrast, the category of 'ritual norm' aims to reframe the discussion by focussing on normativity-paradigms and exceptions-with regard to two key rituals, sacrifice and purification. It thus only partly reprises the corpus of 'sacred laws', while also including other inscriptions or excerpts from them. Calling such norms 'Greek' is not intended as an 'ethnic' designation of the rituals they describe but rather as a reference to the language of the inscriptions. The label 'Greek ritual norms' is thus programmatic, allowing for a wider investigation of the normative characteristics of rituals within the religious 'middle grounds' of the ancient Greek world.
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