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
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... important research networks and fellowship money. Special thanks to my fellow Spencer Fellows Jennifer Kuhn Hanks and Patrick McEwan, and to the awe- inspiring Catharine Lacey. For release time that enabled the manuscript's timely ...
... important for figuring rhetoric as a citizen art, provide a critical context for an inquiry attentive to pedagogy as it reaches beyond the classroom. In addition to works that focus on ancient culture, studies in rhetoric and ...
... important chronicling work, Too's most recent volume, as she puts it, ''acknowledges the social and political dimensions of education in antiquity'' (2001: 16), and thus brings contemporary concerns with the politics of pedagogy to bear ...
... important, but rather that it is part of a complex—a mind-body complex— that learns and moves in response to a situation rather than through the application of abstract principles. In this regard, the study is also informed by a field ...
... important, disseminate honor. In order to follow rhetoric's movement from cultural values to training practices and back again, the book begins and ends with chapters on the cultural roles and places of athletics and rhetoric in ancient ...
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 |