Greek Memories
Theories and Practices

An original exploration of Ancient Greek conceptions of the relationship between memory, time, knowledge and identity across diverse genres.

Luca Castagnoli (Edited by), Paola Ceccarelli (Edited by)

9781108458351, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 April 2023

443 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.638 kg

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 refocusing 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).

Introduction Luca Castagnoli and Paola Ceccarelli
Part I. Archaic and Early Classical Configurations of Memory: 1. Women and memory: the Iliad and the Kosovo cycle Lilah Grace Canevaro
2. Speaking in the wax tablets of memory Peter Agócs
Part II. Memory and Forgetting in the Classical Period: 3. Economies of memory in Greek tragedy Paola Ceccarelli
4. Aristophanes and his Muses, or memory in a comic key Silvia Milanezi
5. Memory, the orators and the public in fourth-century BC Athens Mirko Canevaro
6. The place and nature of memory in Greek historiography Catherine Darbo-Peschanski
7. Lyric oblivion: when Sappho taught Socrates how to forget Andrea Capra
8. Socratic forgetfulness and Platonic irony Ynon Wygoda
9. Memory and recollection in Plato's Philebus: use and definitions R. A. H. King
10. Is memory of the past? Aristotle and the objects of memory Luca Castagnoli
Part III. Hellenistic Configurations of Memory: 11. Hellenistic Cultural Memory: Helen and Menelaus between heroic fiction, ritual practice and poetic praise of the royal power (Theocritus 18) Claude Calame
12. Physics, memory, ethics: the Epicurean road to happiness Emidio Spinelli
Part IV. The Imperial Period: Continuity and Change: 13. Claudius Aelianus: memory, mnemonics, and literature in the age of Caracalla Steven D. Smith
14. Plotinus on memory, recollection and discursive thought Riccardo Chiaradonna
15. Plotinus: remembering and forgetting Stephen R. L. Clark
Part V. Envoi: 16. Greek philosophers on how to memorise – and learn Maria Michela Sassi.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS], Philosophy of mind [HPM], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS]