Continuity and discontinuity of Minoan visual representations in Homeric Epics: The spirals of Okeanos

Kód výsledku v IS VaVaI

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Výsledek na webu

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

Continuity and discontinuity of Minoan visual representations in Homeric Epics: The spirals of Okeanos

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

I suggest that the experience of Minoan visual culture was transmitted through oral epics during the “Dark Ages” that followed the Bronze Age collapse, in the same way that scholars usually assume the transmission of various narrative motifs across different cultures and areas. This experience then emerges in some of the many descriptions, similes and ekphrases of the Homeric Epics. Here, it is not usually possible to detect original Minoan iconographic motifs, but rather similar representational strategies and the intermingling and transformation of original contexts and meanings. Using the example of Homer’s description of the Shield of Achilles, and especially its last two passages, the “Knossian dance” and the image of Okeanos, I first show their mutual visual resonance mediated by geometric motifs of circles, lines, and most especially spirals and whirls. I then argue that Okeanos does not have a cosmogonic dimension in Homer, but rather offers an ekphrastic image of spatial and cognitive unapproachability. I proceed to show how the three specific original contexts from which we know Minoan spiral ornaments – the association with figure-of-eight shields, their use as a kind of ornamental frame and their occurrence near the Knossian miniature frescoes (associated with the Shield of Achilles as early on as by Evans) – can crystallise into a new thematic element, the visual image of Okeanos. Finally, I suggest that it is the ornamental, whose structuring quality inextricably links meaning to its form and context, that can conveniently transmit cultural content across the cultural seam between the Minoan Bronze Age and Archaic Greece, when no stable preferred medium of representation such as painting or poetry is at hand.

Název v anglickém jazyce

Continuity and discontinuity of Minoan visual representations in Homeric Epics: The spirals of Okeanos

Popis výsledku anglicky

I suggest that the experience of Minoan visual culture was transmitted through oral epics during the “Dark Ages” that followed the Bronze Age collapse, in the same way that scholars usually assume the transmission of various narrative motifs across different cultures and areas. This experience then emerges in some of the many descriptions, similes and ekphrases of the Homeric Epics. Here, it is not usually possible to detect original Minoan iconographic motifs, but rather similar representational strategies and the intermingling and transformation of original contexts and meanings. Using the example of Homer’s description of the Shield of Achilles, and especially its last two passages, the “Knossian dance” and the image of Okeanos, I first show their mutual visual resonance mediated by geometric motifs of circles, lines, and most especially spirals and whirls. I then argue that Okeanos does not have a cosmogonic dimension in Homer, but rather offers an ekphrastic image of spatial and cognitive unapproachability. I proceed to show how the three specific original contexts from which we know Minoan spiral ornaments – the association with figure-of-eight shields, their use as a kind of ornamental frame and their occurrence near the Knossian miniature frescoes (associated with the Shield of Achilles as early on as by Evans) – can crystallise into a new thematic element, the visual image of Okeanos. Finally, I suggest that it is the ornamental, whose structuring quality inextricably links meaning to its form and context, that can conveniently transmit cultural content across the cultural seam between the Minoan Bronze Age and Archaic Greece, when no stable preferred medium of representation such as painting or poetry is at hand.

Druh

D - Stať ve sborníku

CEP obor

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OECD FORD obor

60304 - Religious studies

Projekt

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Návaznosti

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Rok uplatnění

2025

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Název statě ve sborníku

Proceedings of the 13th International Congress of Cretan Studies

ISBN

978-960-9480-55-0

ISSN

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e-ISSN

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Počet stran výsledku

13

Strana od-do

1-13

Název nakladatele

Society of Cretan Historical Studies

Místo vydání

Agios Nikolaos

Místo konání akce

Agios Nikolaos

Datum konání akce

5. 10. 2022

Typ akce podle státní příslušnosti

WRD - Celosvětová akce

Kód UT WoS článku

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