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.
- Demonstrates how Greek poetry began the process of grappling with the fleeting quality of life that is found in much poetry throughout human history
- Explores topics of enduring relevance in literary and cultural studies, such as rhythm, metaphor, the idea of the future, and the idea of ruins
- Shows how contemporary theories, such as those of materiality and presence, can bring insights into our understanding of ancient material
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Reviews & endorsements
'Greek Poetry in the Age of Ephemerality offers a bold reassessment of archaic and classical Greek poetry. Sarah Nooter explores temporality as a key aspect of song that allows her to bring together various strands - notably, embodiment, performance, and textual transmission. Her use of new materialism, phenomenology, sound studies, and approaches to affects is sophisticated and yields many original interpretations of poems by Archilochus, Sappho, and other authors. Well argued and engagingly written, Nooter's book is a pleasure to read.' Jonas Grethlein, Professor of Classics, Universität Heidelberg
'Sarah Nooter's new book, Greek Poetry in the Age of Ephemerality, is a fascinating exploration of time and the body in ancient poetry and poetics from Homer to Aeschylus. The place where these elements intersect is in song, music, rhythm, and the voice, which present the most ephemeral features of poetry and yet are the source of its most lasting effects. The book is an invitation to recover a richly embodied experience that is not ours, from works that we still treat as timeless today. Such is the paradoxical challenge of this highly readable study, which is certain to make a contribution to the material turn in Classics.' James I. Porter, Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Classics, University of California, Berkeley
'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
The book is a pleasure to read. The writing is clear, graceful, and occasionally witty.' Michael R. Halleran, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
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Product details
- Date Published: April 2023
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781009320351
- length: 228 pages
- dimensions: 250 x 176 x 20 mm
- weight: 0.62kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
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.
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Author
Sarah Nooter, University of Chicago
SARAH NOOTER is Professor of Classics and Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the author of When Heroes Sing: Sophocles and the Shifting Soundscape of Tragedy (Cambridge, 2012), The Mortal Voice in the Tragedies of Aeschylus (Cambridge, 2017), and co-editor, with Shane Butler, of Sound and the Ancient Senses (2018). She is Editor of the journal Classical Philology.

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Greek Poetry in the Age of Ephemerality

£85.00