Religion and Art in Ancient Greece [With ATOC]

by Ernest A. Gardner

Overview

CONTENTS

I. IDOLATRY AND IMAGINATION
II. ASPECTS OF RELIGION—POPULAR, OFFICIAL, POETICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL
III. THE CONDITIONS OF RELIGIOUS ART IN GREECE
IV. ANTHROPOMORPHISM
V. IDEALISM
VI. INDIVIDUALISM
VII. PERSONIFICATION, CONVENTION, AND SYMBOLISM


PREFACE (An excerpt)

Greek religion may be studied under various aspects; and many recent contributions to this study have been mainly concerned either with the remote origin of many of its ceremonies in primitive ritual, or with the manner in which some of its obscurer manifestations met the deeper spiritual needs which did not find satisfaction in the official cults. Such discussions are of the highest interest to the anthropologist and to the psychologist; but they have the disadvantage of fixing our attention too exclusively on what, to the ordinary Greek, appeared accidental or even morbid, and of making us regard the Olympian pantheon, with its clearly realised figures of the gods, as a mere system imposed more or less from outside upon the old rites and beliefs of the people. In the province of art, at least, the Olympian gods are paramount; and thus we are led to appreciate and to understand their worship as it affected the religious ideals of the people and the services of the State. For we must remember that in the case of religion even more than in that of art, its essential character and its influence upon life and thought lie rather in its full perfection than in its origin...

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013330443
Publisher:	Ladislav Deczi
Publication date:	10/03/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	124
File size:	145 KB

About the Author

ERNEST A. GARDNER

YATES PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND
PUBLIC ORATOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON;
LATE DIRECTOR OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS

Ernest Arthur Gardner was educated at the City of London school and Caius College, Cambridge (fellow, 1885). From 1887 to 1895 he was director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, and later became professor of archaeology at University College London.
His publications include: Introduction to Greek Epigraphy (1887); Ancient Athens (1902); Handbook of Greek Sculpture (1905); Six Greek Sculptors (1910). He was elected first Public Orator of London University in 1910.
His brother, Percy Gardner, was also a prominent archaeologist.