Abstract
This article will interpret Cratos, a mythic character and rhetorical personification present in the works of Hesiod and Aeschylus, as a multilayered and metaphoric figure of cognition, defining him in reference to the hypothesis of the origin of language and culture advanced by Eric Gans’s Generative Anthropology. Cratos was a violent oppressor of Prometheus, involved in provoking a crisis among both gods and humanity. This faithful and ruthless performer of the will of Zeus is viewed here as representing one of the deeper cognitive layers of mythological transfer, that is, as a representation of deferred, but always and anywhere prevalent intra-specific violence, the fundamental source and testimony of crisis in human societies.
Highlights
Classical texts, understood as significant representations of human culture, offer a fascinating collection, a veritable Pleiades of mythological figures, envoys from past ages bearing messages of ongoing and universal relevance
Cratos delivers the so-called “messenger speech” which “provides the extended spoken narrative relating [to] the off-stage crisis” (Hall 2010, 34), prompting Zeus's fear of losing power and presaging much new violence. It is the sign of a destabilization of the order of power, and a crisis of divine domination, involving a threat to the divine rules and a further crisis of access to resources assigned to each level in the hierarchy of power over the world
The presence of Cratos in the drama implies that of violence, and suggests the internal disorder which could only be arrested by an originary event: the imposition by human beings living communally of “a noninstinctive restraint that defers further violence and constitutes thereby the origin of all cultural ‘deferrals’,” in Eric Gans’s formulation (Gans 1981, xi)
Summary
Understood as significant representations of human culture, offer a fascinating collection, a veritable Pleiades of mythological figures, envoys from past ages bearing messages of ongoing and universal relevance. Nor can a visit to an art museum or other shrine of cultural knowledge be fully appreciated without recognizing the prototypes which have been registered in previous centuries and continue to inspire creative thinkers into contemporary times Many of these figures are present in “writing cultures,” including in the narratives which constitute a form of constant human response to the world, thanks to cognitive structures (Culpeper 2014; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2006), which both build and intrigue human minds. Cratos delivers the so-called “messenger speech” which “provides the extended spoken narrative relating [to] the off-stage crisis” (Hall 2010, 34), prompting Zeus's fear of losing power and presaging much new violence It is the sign of a destabilization of the order of power, and a crisis of divine domination, involving a threat to the divine rules and a further crisis of access to resources assigned to each level in the hierarchy of power over the world. This is a matter of social disequilibrium, which leads to the act of representation to be discussed below
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