Ancient Synaesthesia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"“Beyond the visual paradigm” was the challenge issued by the organizers of the symposium that eventually produced the volume Synaesthesia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/06\/ancient-synaesthesia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ancient Synaesthesia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“Beyond the visual paradigm” was the challenge issued by the organizers of the symposium that eventually produced the volume Synaesthesia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/06\/ancient-synaesthesia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Leithart\" \/>\n<meta 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{"id":16141,"date":"2014-06-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2014-06-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T00:00:00","slug":"ancient-synaesthesia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/06\/ancient-synaesthesia\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Synaesthesia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

The contributions to the volume led to two large conclusions: First, there is \u201ca remarkable body of ancient material that regularly crosses sensory lines and blurs any single, simple \u2018opticentric\u2019 focus\u201d; second, the limits of classical scholarship, they concluded, has less to do with an optical focus and more to do with notions of reading. The \u201cvisual paradigm\u201d is a theory of reading that assumes \u201ca reader who reads in order to know.\u201d The editors propose to examine \u201cthe reader who reads not just to make sense but also in order to sense\u201d (2-3).<\/p>\n

The range of essays is remarkable: Homer on the number of muses and the \u201cplurality\u201d of aesthetic experience; the role of touch in Herodotus; animal sounds in Aristophanies and other comedians; smell in ancient drama; the role of synaesthetic experience in Plato\u2019s account of the experience of Beauty; later treatments of classical treatments of synaesthesia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Contributors find synaesthesia in unexpected places. Mark Bradley that the famous Homeric \u201cwine dark sea\u201d referred \u201cto abstract concepts of \u2018wine-dark,\u2019 \u2018frenzied\u2019 or \u2018Dionysiac,\u2019 and the category\u2019s more direct associations with the properties of wine (not just its visual appearance, but also its taste, smell, effects and dangers) contribute a great deal more to the semantics of the lines in which this colour is used than a straightforwardly chromatic interpretation. Achilles is intoxicated with grief and revenge; Odysseus is shipwrecked in waters that are as deep, intense, and treacherous as wine.\u201d \u201cWine\u201d was not just a color term but \u201cappealed to the object as much as what it looked like\u201d (132-3).<\/p>\n

And when the synaesthesia is obvious \u2013 as in the moment in Knights<\/em>\u00a0when the Council suddenly \u201clooked mustard\u201d \u2013 the contributor (Ashley Clements) takes the phrase not as as a poetic device designed to shock but as a pointer to the Greek sense that vision and taste were integrated.<\/p>\n

Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses<\/em> is the first of a planned six-volume collection, so there\u2019s lots more of this multi-sensory feast to come.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"