Facing the gods
Subtitle: epiphany and representation in Graeco-Roman art, literature, and religion
By: Verity Platt
Series: Greek culture in the Roman world
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780521861717
Subjects: Religion; Greece; Civilization; HISTORY / General; Epiphany in art
Description: "This is the first history of epiphany as both a phenomenon and a cultural discourse within the Graeco-Roman world. It explores divine manifestations and their representations not only in art but also in literary, historical and epigraphic accounts, and sets the cultural analysis of this unfamiliar conceptual phenomenon within a historical framework that explores its development from the archaic period to the Roman Empire. In particular, a surprisingly large number of the surviving images from antiquity are not only religious but epiphanically charged. Verity Platt argues that the enduring potential for divine incursions into mortal experience provides a reliable cognitive structure which supports both ancient religion and mythology. At the same time, Graeco-Roman culture exhibits a sophisticated awareness of the difficulties and ambiguities in apprehending deity and representing the divine presence, and of the potential for the manmade sign to lead the worshipper back to an unmediated epiphanic encounter"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I: 1. Framing epiphany in art and text; 2. Material epiphany: encountering the divine in cult images; 3. Epiphany and authority in Hellenistic Greece; 4. The poetics of epiphany in Hellenistic epigram; Part II: 5. Virtual visions: piety and paideia in Second Sophistic literature; 6. Dream visions and cult images in the Second Sophistic; 7. The apologetics of representation in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana; Part III: 8. Dying to see: epiphany and representation on Roman sarcophagi.