Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion

Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion PDF Author: Steven Lonsdale
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
In private and in public life, the ancient Greeks danced to express divine adoration and human festivity. They danced at feasts and choral competitions, at weddings and funerals, in observance of the cycles of both nature and human existence. Formal and informal dances marked the rhythms of life and death. In Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion, Steven Lonsdale looks at how the Greeks themselves regarded the act of dance, and how dance and related forms of ritual play in Greek religious festivals served a wide variety of functions in Greek society. The act of worship, he explains, often implied engaging in collective rites regulated by playful behavior, the most common forms of which were group hymns and choral dances.

Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion

Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion PDF Author: Steven Lonsdale
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
In private and in public life, the ancient Greeks danced to express divine adoration and human festivity. They danced at feasts and choral competitions, at weddings and funerals, in observance of the cycles of both nature and human existence. Formal and informal dances marked the rhythms of life and death. In Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion, Steven Lonsdale looks at how the Greeks themselves regarded the act of dance, and how dance and related forms of ritual play in Greek religious festivals served a wide variety of functions in Greek society. The act of worship, he explains, often implied engaging in collective rites regulated by playful behavior, the most common forms of which were group hymns and choral dances.

Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece

Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Mark William Padilla
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838754184
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This volume reflects on liminality as it relates to initiatory themes in Greek literature and on literary works, especially tragedy, that represent heroes and heroines undergoing rites of passage. Featured works include Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, Euripides' Ion and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Sophocles' Antigone and Women of Trachis.

Greek Religion

Greek Religion PDF Author: Walter Burkert
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674362819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
A survey of the religious beliefs of ancient Greece covers sacrifices, libations, purification, gods, heroes, the priesthood, oracles, festivals, and the afterlife.

The Dance in Ancient Greece

The Dance in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Lillian Beatrice Lawler
Publisher: Wesleyan
ISBN:
Category : Dance
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This volume presents an academic yet non-technical introduction and overview of ancient Greek dance. Dance was very important to the ancient Greeks, associated with music, verse, and the theatre. Processions, games, and performances involving dance were popular and widespread in Greek culture. Lawler lists seven types of sources for her work: literary, metrical, musical, archaeological, epigraphical, linguistic, and anthropological, and explores the forms, occasions, and participants involved with ancient Greek dances. Literary sources are numerous and rich and Lawler suggests reading them will give more insights into ancient Greek dance. Metrical sources include actual treatises on metrics as well as actual lines of verse used for dance. Much of the metrical material is fragmentary, while musical sources include discussions of music by writers as well as mostly fragmentary musical remains.

The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Hebrew Bible

The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Samuel E. Balentine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190944935
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 589

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Book Description
Ritual has a primal connection to the idea that a transcendent order - numinous and mysterious, supranatural and elusive, divine and wholly other - gives meaning and purpose to life. The construction of rites and rituals enables humans to conceive and apprehend this transcendent order, to symbolize it and interact with it, to postulate its truths in the face of contradicting realities and to repair them when they have been breached or diminished. This Handbook provides a compendium of the information essential for constructing a comprehensive and integrated account of ritual and worship in the ancient world. Its focus on ritual and worship from the perspective of biblical studies, as opposed to religious studies, highlights that the world of ritual and worship was a topic of central concern for the people of the Ancient Near East, including the world of the Bible. Given the scarcity of the material in the Bible itself, the authors in this collection use materials from the ancient Near East to provide a larger context for the practices of the biblical world, giving due attention to historical, anthropological, and social scientific methods that inform the context of biblical worship. The specifics of ritual and worship life-the sacred spaces, times, and actors in worship-are examined in detail, with essays covering both the divine and human aspects of the sacred dimension. The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Hebrew Bible considers several underlying concepts of ritual practice and closes with a theological outlook on worship and ritual from a variety of perspectives, demonstrating a fruitful exchange between biblical studies, ritual theory, and social science research.

Ritual: A Very Short Introduction

Ritual: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Barry Stephenson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199943583
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance

A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance PDF Author: Kimerer L. LaMothe
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004390006
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
The relationship between religion and dance is as old as humankind. Contemporary methods for studying this relationship date back a century. The difference between these two time frames is significant: scholars are still developing theories and methods capable of illuminating this vast history that take account of their limited place within it. A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance takes on a primary challenge of doing so: overcoming a conceptual dichotomy between “religion” and “dance” forged in the colonial era that justified western Christian hostility towards dance traditions across six continents over six centuries. Beginning with its enlightenment roots, LaMothe narrates a selective history of this dichotomy, revealing its ongoing work in separating dance studies from religious studies. Turning to the Bushmen of the African Kalahari, LaMothe introduces an ecokinetic approach that provides scholars with conceptual resources for mapping the generative interdependence of phenomena that appear as “dance” and/or “religion.”

Ritual and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World

Ritual and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World PDF Author: Eftychia Stavrianopoulou
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Greece
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Klassisches Altertum - Ritual - Kult - Gesellschaft.

Practitioners of the Divine

Practitioners of the Divine PDF Author: Beate Dignas
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
"What is a Greek priest?" The volume, which has its origins in a symposium held at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., focuses on the question through a variety of lenses: the visual representation of cult personnel, priests as ritual experts, variations of priesthood, ideal concepts and their transformation, and the role of manteis. Each chapter looks at how priests and religious officials used a potential authority to promote themselves and their posts, how they played a role in conserving, shaping and reviving cult activity, how they acted behind the curtain of polis institutions, and how they performed as mediators between men and gods. It becomes clear that Greek priests had many faces, and that the factors that determined their roles and activities are political as well as historical, religious as well as economic, idealistic as well as pragmatic, personal as well as communal.

Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion

Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion PDF Author: Esther Eidinow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316715213
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to represent and worship them. It excavates the attitudes towards the gods implicit in cult practice and analyses the beliefs about the gods embedded in such diverse texts and contexts as comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, philosophy, ancient Greek blood sacrifice, myth and other forms of storytelling. The result is a richer picture of the supernatural in ancient Greece, and a whole series of fresh questions about how views of and relations to the gods changed over time.