Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion (Greek Culture in the Roman World)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 6/13/2014
EAN 9781316619193, ISBN10: 1316619192
Paperback, 100 pages, 24.4 x 17 x 2.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
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 both in art and in literary, historical and epigraphic accounts. The cultural analysis of epiphany is set within a historical framework that examines its development from the archaic period to the Roman Empire. In particular, a surprisingly large number of the images that have survived 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 that supports both ancient religion and mythology. At the same time, Graeco-Roman culture exhibits a sophisticated awareness of the difficulties in apprehending deity and representing divine presence, and of the potential for the manmade sign to lead the worshipper back to an unmediated epiphanic encounter.
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 Second Sophistic literature
7. The apologetics of representation in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana
Part III
8. Dying to see
epiphanic sarcophagi from Imperial Rome.