What's in a name? Using the example of a famous monster from Greek myth, this book challenges the dominant view that a mythical symbol denotes a single, clear-cut 'figure' and proposes instead to ...define the name 'Scylla' as a combination of three concepts - sea, dog and woman - whose articulation changes over time. While archaic and classical Greek versions usually emphasize the metaphorical coherence of Scylla's components, the name is increasingly treated as a well-defined but also paradoxical construct from the late fourth century BCE onward. Proceeding through detailed analyses of Greek and Roman texts and images, Professor Hopman shows how the same name can variously express anxieties about the sea, dogs, aggressive women and shy maidens, thus offering an empirical response to the semiotic puzzle raised by non-referential proper names.
This volume explores how the choruses of Greek tragedy creatively combined media and discourses to generate their own specific forms of meaning. The contributors analyse choruses as fictional, ...religious and civic performers; as combinations of text, song and dance; and as objects of reflection in themselves, in relation and contrast to the choruses of comedy and melic poetry. Drawing on earlier analyses of the social context of Greek drama, the non-textual dimensions of tragedy, and the relations between dramatic and melic choruses, the chapters explore the uses of various analytic tools in allowing us better to capture the specificity of the tragic chorus. Special attention is given to the physicality of choral dancing, musical interactions between choruses and actors, the trajectories of reception, and the treatment of time and space in the odes.
In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus describes the sight of his companions devoured by Scylla as the most pitiful spectacle he ever witnessed over the course of his wanderings. Many centuries later, the ...fascination elicited by the “dog of the sea” still holds sway among the élite of imperial Rome, who have her occupy the central basin of the richly decorated grotto of an imperial villa near Sperlonga. This thesis explores the reasons for that fascination by reconstructing the cultural background from which Scylla derives her significance, paying special attention to the verbal and visual connotations, analogies, and metaphors associated with her. Scylla's manifestations in literature and art are manifold and seem at times unrelated. In particular, her description in the Odyssey and the type associated with her in the visual arts seem to emerge independently and to be largely shaped by their respective generic context. Yet, among the variety of those representations, three components—the woman, the dog, and the sea—recur throughout the corpus and thus can be taken to define Scylla's identity. Thanks to the rich associations that they conjure up, Scylla may embody dangers ranging from a voracious sea monster, through a sexually aggressive femme fatale, to an untamed maiden who fails to achieve her transition into womanhood. All three hazards involve in fact a narrow and potentially dangerous passage, be it the gullet of the sea, the female genitals, or a maiden's transition to marriage and sexuality. The liminality that characterizes these dangers mirrors Scylla's traditional location in the straits of Messina, as well as her definition as a hybrid creature that blurs categories and the intermediate status that dogs and women hold in Greek culture. The Roman reception of Scylla involves a process of systematization that strongly differentiates between previously complementary Greek traditions. However, descriptions of her in Latin poetry often conjure up the same semantics as Greek sources, sometimes using transpositions in order to convey similar meanings in a different cultural context. In spite of superficial variations, the fears associated with Scylla show remarkable coherence throughout antiquity.
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