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. |
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... encounters—was itself a major function of contests. Aretē was therefore not entirely outcome- driven, but rather emerged in the encounters themselves, in the act of repeating virtuous actions in relation to others. Chapter 1 delineates ...
... encounters—in short, kairos is the time of the agōn, the immediacy that calls for quick, cunning response. Since so much has been written on the concept of kairos, this chapter asks what a particularly athletic notion of kairos might ...
... encounters with others. Chapter 7, ''The Visible Spoken: Rhetoric, Athletics, and the Circulation of Honor,'' thus returns to the agōn, this time to the contest between rhetoric and athletics as arts of existence. The chapter considers ...
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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 |