Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient GreeceThe role of athletics in ancient Greece extended well beyond the realms of kinesiology, competition, and entertainment. In teaching and philosophy, athletic practices overlapped with rhetorical ones and formed a shared mode of knowledge production. Bodily Arts examines this intriguing intersection, offering an important context for understanding the attitudes of ancient Greeks toward themselves and their environment. In classical society, rhetoric was an activity, one that was in essence "performed." Detailing how athletics came to be rhetoric's "twin art" in the bodily aspects of learning and performance, Bodily Arts draws on diverse orators and philosophers such as Isocrates, Demosthenes, and Plato, as well as medical treatises and a wealth of artifacts from the time, including statues and vases. Debra Hawhee's insightful study spotlights the notion of a classical gymnasium as the location for a habitual "mingling" of athletic and rhetorical performances, and the use of ancient athletic instruction to create rhetorical training based on rhythm, repetition, and response. Presenting her data against the backdrop of a broad cultural perspective rather than a narrow disciplinary one, Hawhee presents a pioneering interpretation of Greek civilization from the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BCE by observing its citizens in action. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 30
... Agonism and the Production of Aretē 15 2. Sophistic Mētis: An Intelligence of the Body 44 3. Kairotic Bodies 65 4. Phusiopoiesis: The Arts of Training 86 5. Gymnasium I: The Space of Training 109 6. Gymnasium II: The Bodily Rhythms of ...
... agonism and aretē, and they came together in the ancient festival to combine the visible with the articulable. Pedagogically, they shared modes of knowledge production, an attention to timing, and an emphasis on habituation, imitation ...
... agonism, the situ- atedness of learning, and the role of rhythm in learning that this study seeks to elaborate. A few noteworthy studies include Geoffrey Sirc's English Composition as a Happening (2002), which figures painting as a ...
... agonism and play in improvisational learning, a point also explored in an earlier article by Susan Jarratt (1991b). These works serve as early signs that scholars of rhetoric and composition intuit the imbrication of learning and ...
... Agonism and the Production of Aretē,'' begins by examining the broadly interrelated values of the contest (agōn) and virtuosity (aretē). The agōn was for ancient Athenians the mode of virtue-production par excellence, as it provided the ...
Contents
Agonism and the Production of Aretē | 15 |
An Intelligence of the Body | 44 |
Kairotic Bodies | 65 |
The Arts of Training | 86 |
The Space of Training | 109 |
The Bodily Rhythms of Habit | 133 |
Rhetoric Athletics and the Circulation | 162 |