Singing for the Gods: Performances of Myth and Ritual in Archaic and Classical Greece

by Barbara Kowalzig

Overview

Singing for the Gods develops a new approach towards an old question in the study of religion - the relationship of myth and ritual. Focusing on ancient Greek religion, Barbara Kowalzig exploits the joint occurrence of myth and ritual in archaic and classical Greek song-culture. She shows how choral performances of myth and ritual, taking place all over the ancient Greek world in the early fifth century BC, help to effect social and political change in their own time. Religious song emerges as integral to a rapidly changing society hovering between local, regional, and panhellenic identities and between aristocratic rule and democracy. Drawing on contemporary debates on myth, ritual, and performance in social anthropology, modern history, and theatre studies, this book establishes Greek religion's dynamic role and gives religious song-culture its deserved place in the study of Greek history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199219964
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/25/2008
Series:	Oxford Classical Monographs
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Barbara Kowalzig is Leverhulme Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Table of Contents

Prelude to the khoros1. Introduction2. Dancing on Delos3. New Tunes in Musical Argos: Mapping out the Argolid in Cultic Song4. Locality and Panhellenism: Aiginetan Myth and Delphic Ritual5. Returning to the Beginning: Insular Identity on Fifth-Century Rhodes6. Aetiology Overseas: From Epic to Ethnic Identity in Megale Hellas7. Who were the Boiotians? Myths of Migration in RitualEpilogue