Materiality and Aesthetics in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry

Abstract

This book formulates a novel way to comprehend the relationship between materiality and cognition by demonstrating how descriptions of objects in archaic and classical Greek texts reveal distinctive ways of conceptualizing human thought and perception. The readings center on the concept of poikilia, a richly multivalent term in Greek aesthetics that is used to characterize artifacts as well as mental activity. By delineating patterns of interaction between living and inorganic beings through the lens of this aesthetic concept, this book maps a body of canonical texts onto the new critical terrains comprised by the new materialisms and cognitive humanities and reveals the points of intersection between cognitive processes and the material entities produced by them. The result, an innovative contribution to both Classics and New Materialism studies, uncovers the intimate and reciprocal interaction between minds and matter as central to ancient Greek aesthetic experience.