6. The Modes of Generation of Flowers and Trees: Homeric Poetry and Theophrastus In Chapters 4 and 5, we surveyed two sets of Homeric vegetal images. The one set associates arboreal images with the established order of the cosmos and floral images with changes or challenges to that order. In the other set, the wild growths both of flowers and of trees are associated with uncivilized lands,… Read more
5. Anchises’ Pastures, Laertes’ Orchards: Images of Civilization and Its Opposite Having explored Homeric vegetal imagery that describes order and threats to that order at the cosmic level, we turn now to a set of images that explores similar concepts on the human scale. We found in Chapter 4 that the Homeric poets associated trees and pillars with stability in the cosmos and flowers with challenges to… Read more
4. Stable Trees and Sudden Blooms: Images of Continuity and Change in the Cosmos In this chapter, I will focus on the sorts of images that the Homeric poets associated with the concepts of order in the cosmos and of changes and challenges to that order—or to put it another way, with changes put into effect or merely threatened. As we shall see, these poets drew on… Read more
Part II. Cosmic and Civic Order Preamble In Part I, we considered a set of Homeric floral images associated with erotic bodies, and we explored their interactions with the characteristics of flowers in the Greek natural environment. I would now like to focus on a rather different class of Homeric vegetal images. As we shall see, the Homeric poets developed both floral and arboreal images to… Read more
3. Shifting Surfaces of Art and Nature: Flowers, Deception, and the Ποικίλον I would now like to consider how Homeric associations of flowers, seduction, and deception interacted with the general characteristics of the Greek flora. As we shall see, we get a clearer sense of the origins of the relevant Homeric images when we consider them alongside a further set of Homeric images that associate seduction and… Read more
2. Fantasizing the Narcissus, Gilding the Hyacinth: Flowers, Seduction, and Deception in Homeric Poetry Having studied floral images of the erotic that were developed by the archaic lyric poets, we turn now to the equivalent Homeric images. By comparing these two genres we can set in relief the particular choices made by the Homeric poets in their development of such imagery. As we have seen, in Greek… Read more
1. Flowers, Subjectivity, and the Gaze: The Erotic Imagery of Greek Lyric The imagery of archaic Greek lyric offers our most promising comparandum for Homeric treatments of flowers and erotic bodies; accordingly, I would like to consider relevant images from the lyric corpus before turning to the Homeric images that will form the focus of my study. [1] The bodies decked with… Read more
Part I. Flowers and Erotic Bodies Preamble The first part of this study focuses on vegetal images of the erotic or, more specifically, on associations of flowers and erotic bodies. Most of the surviving examples of floral images of the erotic in archaic Greek poetry are to be found in the corpus of Greek lyric; accordingly, I shall draw on that genre to set in relief… Read more
Introduction The images of flowers, trees, and other plants that we find in the poetry of a given region represent particular responses to a particular flora with particular characteristics familiar to those who live in that region. Therefore, if we are to achieve a proper understanding of the operations of such images and of the ways in which they would have been received by audiences and readers,… Read more
Preface Elenei, soţiei mele scumpe But Athena daughter of Zeus made himTaller and broader to look at; and from his headShe sent down curly locks, like the flower of the hyacinth.As when some man pours gold around silver,A skilled man, whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athena taughtEvery kind of craft—he achieves graceful works—So she poured grace on his head and… Read more
