Papers by Patricia Rosenmeyer
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
A colossal statue, originally built to honor an ancient pharaoh, still stands in Egyptian Thebes.... more A colossal statue, originally built to honor an ancient pharaoh, still stands in Egyptian Thebes. Damaged by an earthquake, and re-identified as the Homeric hero Memnon, it was believed to “speak” regularly at daybreak. By the middle of the first century CE, the colossus had become a popular site for sacred tourism; visitors flocked to hear the miraculous sound, leaving behind over one hundred Greek and Latin inscriptions. These inscriptions are varied and diverse: brief acknowledgments of having heard Memnon’s voice; longer lists by Roman administrators including details of personal accomplishments; and elaborate elegiac poems by both amateurs and professionals. The inscribed names reveal the presence of emperors and soldiers, provincial governors and businessmen, elite women and military wives, and families with children. This study is the first complete assessment of all the inscriptions considered in their social, cultural, and historical context. The Memnon colossus functioned ...
Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, 1997
Page 1. PA Rosenmeyer Her Master' s Voice: Sappho's Dialogue with Homer Sappho has alwa... more Page 1. PA Rosenmeyer Her Master' s Voice: Sappho's Dialogue with Homer Sappho has always been a controversial figure in classical schol-arship. The controversy tends to focus on thè émotions and ex-périences of her ...
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
This chapter uses Homer to triangulate the relationship between inscriber and statue. Memnon is a... more This chapter uses Homer to triangulate the relationship between inscriber and statue. Memnon is a ghost from the epic past anchored in the Egyptian present; what better way to honor him than to inscribe Homer’s words on his body? This evocation of Homer is not restricted to a narrow class of visitors. Imperial authors such as Lucian and Philostratus engage with Homer but write specifically for an elite audience. The Memnon inscriptions that echo Homer, however, are created by and for a more diverse public. All the inscriptions participate at some level in reactivating the mythical past, as if the trip to Thebes paralleled an epic trip to the Underworld. The chapter argues that visitors who sought out the statue were hoping precisely for such a “close encounter,” an experience that would connect them with the Homeric past, and that this experience transcended differences in social status and educational background.
<p>Chapter 1 presents the colossus itself: an overview of the inscriptions and the ancient ... more <p>Chapter 1 presents the colossus itself: an overview of the inscriptions and the ancient testimonials to the miracle of Memnon's voice. While the transformation into a Trojan hero was mostly complete by the time Pliny visited in the latter part of the first century CE, the statue continued to be defined by a set of oppositions: Memnon was both dead and alive, mortal and divine, Egyptian and Greco-Roman, silent and speaking. Similarly, his colossality was both compromised and intensified by his fragmentary state; the marvelous voice emerged from a headless torso. The author argues in this chapter that it was precisely this combination of massiveness and fragmentariness that encouraged tourists and worshippers to engage with the statue. They did so by inscribing its surfaces and inhabiting its sacred space.</p>
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
Chapter 6 starts with the accidental silencing of the statue in the early third century CE, and j... more Chapter 6 starts with the accidental silencing of the statue in the early third century CE, and jumps ahead to its rediscovery in Europe. In the mid-eighteenth century, travelers reported seeing a huge statue with poems etched on its surface. Later, Napoleon’s surveyors brought back drawings scribbled down in their free time. The nineteenth century saw a craze for all things Egyptian: Hegel mentioned the colossus; Keats and Wordsworth turned Memnon into a Romantic hero. Memnon functioned as an alter ego for the poet himself, broken in body yet still striving to sing in the harsh environment of the real world. Just as he had in the imperial period, Memnon also represented something strange and inexplicable. The striking voice of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is also heard only in the context of fragmentation and decay. The status of these statues as fragments, as colossal wrecks, allows for the magic of the voice.
<p>Chapter 3 explores the personal relationship visitors thought they had with Memnon. In r... more <p>Chapter 3 explores the personal relationship visitors thought they had with Memnon. In response to Memnon's morning cry, visitors used inscriptions to communicate with the articulate yet inanimate statue. Following two main impulses of animation, inscribers either addressed the god as a listener through the rhetorical figure of apostrophe or imagined him as a speaker, calling out to his mother or to them, through <italic>prosopopeia</italic>. The latter impulse overlaps with the concept of epiphany, where the god makes himself manifest by some sign—usually visual, but in this case aural. This chapter discusses apostrophe, <italic>prosopopeia</italic>, and epiphany as evidence for visitors' yearning to commemorate their interactions with Memnon. Inserting themselves into the collective practice of sacred tourism, they nevertheless seek to make the verbal exchange meaningful on a personal level. The inscriptions bear witness to this tension between the communality and the uniqueness of each instance of communication with Memnon.</p>
<p>Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of Egypt as a destination for sacred tourism and as a... more <p>Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of Egypt as a destination for sacred tourism and as a repository of ancient culture, epitomized by the colossus, which functioned as a place of cultural memory. Imperial authors viewed Egypt as a place where Greek myth came to life. Visitors were inspired either by a kind of spiritual touristic impulse—the desire to witness the sacred (<italic>theoria</italic>)—or by an intellectual tourism and yearning to experience what they had already read or heard about. The inscriptions document these expressions of religious and intellectual wonder, crystallized at the moment of hearing Memnon's voice. Whether visitors came as worshippers or tourists, in their minds the monument functioned as a material link to the past that miraculously came alive every morning at dawn. The colossus could elicit two distinct reactions—spiritual or intellectual—yet both fit within the framework of a fascination with the mythical past.</p>
From Document to History, 2019
The Classical Quarterly, 2019
In Sappho's two-line fragment 115V, an unidentified speaker addresses a lucky bridegroom, won... more In Sappho's two-line fragment 115V, an unidentified speaker addresses a lucky bridegroom, wondering how best to describe him; the answer follows immediately:τίῳ σ᾿, ὦ φίλε γάμβρε, καλῶς ἐικάσδω;ὄρπακι βραδίνῳ σε μάλιστ᾿ ἐικάσδω.Dear bridegroom, to what do I best compare you?I compare you most of all to a delicate branch.
Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets
Epistolary Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature, 2013
In 1970, in an issue of the journal Yale French Studies, the semiotician Tzvetan Todorov explored... more In 1970, in an issue of the journal Yale French Studies, the semiotician Tzvetan Todorov explored the use of letters in Choderlos de Laclos' eighteenthcentury epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons. Todorov claimed that: epistolary messages have a double meaning. On the one hand, they mean what the sentences that constitute them mean, and each letter says something di ferent from the other. On the other hand, they possess a connotation, identical in the mind of all, which is that of the "letter" as a social phenomenon, and this connotation is in addition, or even in opposition, to the literal message of each letter.
What was it about epistolarity that appealed so strongly to the Greek imagination? The first refe... more What was it about epistolarity that appealed so strongly to the Greek imagination? The first reference in Greek literature to a letter occurs in our oldest extant Greek poem, Homer's Iliad. But letters can be found lurking in every corner of ancient Greek writing. This book aims to bring the literary letters themselves into clear view for contemporary readers. Many ancient writers included letters in other narrative genres: Euripides brought letters on stage; historians included letters as documents; Greek novelists sprinkled their stories with letters exchanged between separated lovers; and epigrammatists played with the epigram as letter. By the second and third centuries CE, many centuries after Homer's epics, imaginative letters had evolved into an established genre in their own right: Aelian and Alciphron excelled in epistolary impersonations, imitating the voices of the lower classes, and collecting their letters in anthologies; Philostratus emerged as a master of epistolary spin, taking one theme and subtly tweaking it in half a dozen letters to different addressees; and anonymous writers competed with one another in their particular form of ghost-writing for the rich and famous. Arranged chronologically, with introductory sections for each time period, this book studies a wide range of writers, genres and literary levels and suggests that there is more to a letter than just the information it communicates. Epistolary context is just as important as content, as will be rediscovered by Ovid, Richardson, Laclos, and a whole host of later European writers. Patricia A. Rosenmeyer has chosen a highly entertaining selection, which includes translation of previously inaccessible or untranslated works, and deftly opens up a neglected area of study to provide an enjoyable and significant survey for students of Greek epistolography.
Epistolary Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature, 2013
Acknowledgments Introduction, Owen Hodkinson and Patricia A. Rosenmeyer I. Epistolary Forms: Lett... more Acknowledgments Introduction, Owen Hodkinson and Patricia A. Rosenmeyer I. Epistolary Forms: Letters in Narrative, Letters as Narrative A. Epistolary Writing in Extended Narratives: Letters in Euripides, Herodotus, and Xenophon 1) The Appearance of Letters on Stages and Vases, Patricia A. Rosenmeyer 2) Letters in Herodotus, Angus Bowie 3) Letters in Xenophon, Deborah Gera B. Correspondences of Historical Figures: Authentic and Pseudonymous 4) Narrative and Epistolarity in the 'Platonic' Epistles, Andrew D. Morrison 5) Epistolary Epicureans, Pamela Gordon 6) The Letters of Euripides, Orlando Poltera II. Innovation and Experimentation in Epistolary Narratives A. Epistolarity and Other Narrative Forms: Generic Hybridity 7) Addressing Power: Fictional Letters Between Alexander and Darius, Tim Whitmarsh 8) Alciphron and the Sympotic Letter Tradition, Jason Konig 9) Lucian's Saturnalian Epistolarity, Niall Slater B. Embedded Letters in Longer Fictions 10) Odysseus' Letter to Kalypso in Lucian's Verae Historiae, Silvio F. Bar 11) Yours Truly? Letters in Achilles Tatius, Ian Repath 12) Letters in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Dimitri Kasprzyk C. Short Stories in Epistolary Form 13) The Epistolary Ghost Story in Phlegon of Tralles, John Morgan 14) Epistolarity and Narrative in ps.-Aeschines Epistle 10, Owen Hodkinson III. Jewish and Early Christian Epistolary Narratives 15) Letters in the War between Rome and Judaea, Ryan Olson 16) The Function of the Letter Form in Christian Martyrdom Accounts, Jane Mclarty Bibliography Indices
Page 1. ANCIENT GREEK LITERARY LETTERS SELECTIONS IN TRANSLATION PATRICIA A. ROSENMEYER ^ rX A io... more Page 1. ANCIENT GREEK LITERARY LETTERS SELECTIONS IN TRANSLATION PATRICIA A. ROSENMEYER ^ rX A io C CP 9 IC ^ COW g tX h tf; ff^ H CU>C^M^ Page 2. RECTO RUNNING HEAD ANCIENT GREEK LITERARY ...
Comparative Literature Studies, 2003
The Classical Quarterly 69.1, 2019
This is a study of the the description of the bridegroom in Sappho's epithalamic fragment 115V, w... more This is a study of the the description of the bridegroom in Sappho's epithalamic fragment 115V, which uses the technique of eikasia (comparison) to associate him with a young and delicate plant (orpax bradinos). It discusses the use of such technique, plant imagery in Greek poetry, the effect of the comparison - the praise or the insult of the bridegroom -, and the idea of habrosune in Sappho's song.
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Papers by Patricia Rosenmeyer
Cambridge Core - Cambridge University Press - Open Access to the article Ragusa, G., & Rosenmeyer, P. (2019). A DELICATE BRIDEGROOM: HABROSUNĒ IN SAPPHO, FR. 115V: In memory of Milla Ragusa. The Classical Quarterly, 69(1), 62-74.
DOI: 10.1017/S0009838819000417