Greek Poetry in the Age of Ephemerality

Argues that the ephemeral appears in enduring forms through the body and inscribed texts in Greek poetry.

Sarah Nooter (Author)

9781009320351, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 April 2023

228 pages
25 x 17.6 x 2 cm, 0.62 kg

'I loved this book. Written with style and wit, Nooter's Greek Poetry in The Age of Ephemerality breathes new life into archaic Greek lyric. Avoiding reductive binaries and clichéd notions of ephemerality and permanence, Nooter reanimates both ancient and contemporary ideas about poetry and poetic immortality. Attuned to extraordinary affect as well as to life's more ordinary rhythms and temporalities, her readings show us how the body itself endures, whether in mummified form, as a chorus of dancers, or as the movement, rhythm, and sound that both originate from and return us to poet and performer.' Melissa Mueller, Professor of Classics, University of Massachusetts Amherst

This book suggests that poetry offers a way to remain in the world – not only by declarations of intent or the promotion of remembrance, but also through the durable physicality of its practice. Whether carved in stone or wood, printed onto a page, beat out by a mimetic or rhythmic body, or humming in the mind, poems are meant to engrave and adhere. Ancient Greek poetry exhibits a particularly acute awareness of change, decay, and the ephemerality inherent in mortality. Yet it couples its presentation of this awareness with an offering of meaningful embodiment in shifting forms that are aligned with, yet subtly manipulative of, mortal time. Sarah Nooter's argument ranges widely across authors and genres, from Homer and the Homeric Hymns through Sappho and Archilochus to Pindar and Aeschylus. The book will be compelling reading for all those interested in Greek literature and in poetry more broadly.

1. Did the heart beat? Rhythm and the body in ancient Greek poetry
2. The substance of song: music in Homer and the Homeric Hymns
3. The erotics of again: time and touch in Sappho
4. Situating Simonides: stones, song, and sound
5. Writing the future: Pindar, Aeschylus, and the tablet of the mind
6. Recovering the bodies of Archilochus' Cologne Epode and Timotheus' Persae.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]