Images in Mind

Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought

Deborah Tarn Steiner

$105

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Princeton University Pres
01 December 2002

"In archaic and classical Greece, statues played a constant role in people's religious, political, economic, aesthetic, and mental lives. Evidence of many kinds demonstrates that ancient Greeks thought about--and interacted with--statues in ways very different from our own. This book recovers ancient thinking about statues by approaching them through contemporary literary sources. It not only shows that ancient viewers conceived of images as more operative than aesthetic, but additionally reveals how poets and philosophers found in sculpture a practice ""good to think with."" Deborah Tarn Steiner considers how Greek authors used images to ponder the relation of a copy to an original and of external appearance to inner reality. For these writers, a sculpture could straddle life and death, encode desire, or occasion reflection on their own act of producing a text. Many of the same sources also reveal how thinking about statues was reflected in the objects' everyday treatment. Viewing representations of gods and heroes as vessels hosting a living force, worshippers ritually washed, clothed, and fed them in order to elicit the numinous presence within.

By reading the plastic and verbal sources together, this book offers new insights into classical texts while illuminating the practices surrounding the design, manufacture, and deployment of ancient images.

Its argument that images are properly objects of cultural and social--rather than purely aesthetic--study will attract art historians, cultural historians, and anthropologists, as well as classicists."

By: Deborah Tarn Steiner
Imprint: Princeton University Pres
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 567g
ISBN: 9780691094885
ISBN 10: 0691094888
Pages: 376
Publication Date: 01 December 2002
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Deborah Tarn Steiner is Associate Professor of Classics at Columbia University. She is the author of The Crown of Song: Metaphor in Pindar , and The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece (Princeton).

Reviews for Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought

[A] comprehensive, richly documented study... Steiner analyzes in detail the role of images in communicating love, desire, and longing... Informative and satisfying. -- Choice Stone carving is a reductive technique: the sculptor is always involved in the process of removing and discarding material from the original block to reveal the image within. Steiner has done exactly the opposite: she has provided much more material for our consideration than she promised at the beginning... Undoubtedly the strongest aspect of this book is the continuing discussion of mimesis and the often ambiguous relation of perceived form to reality, a thread that is interwoven throughout the work. --Paul Rehak, American Journal of Philology