Materiality and aesthetics in archaic and classical Greek poetry

Illuminates the reciprocal interaction between minds and materials as a fundamental feature of ancient Greek aestheticsIllustrates the cognitive vibrancy attributed to objects such as armor, textiles, and jewelry in Greek textsCombines new materialist and cognitivist theoretical approachesOffers innovative readings of passages from the Iliad, Odyssey, Works and Days, Theogony as well as from the works of Sappho, Alcman, Alcaeus, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and EuripidesCombining New Materialist and cognitive methodologies, Amy Lather shows the different ways in which matter interacted with mind in ancient Greek thought. Her readings centre on the concept of poikilia, a richly multivalent term in Greek aesthetics that is used to characterise artefacts as well as mental activity.

By delineating patterns of interaction between living and inorganic beings through the lens of this aesthetic concept, Lather maps a body of canonical texts onto the new critical terrains comprised by the new materialisms and cognitive humanities and reveals the points of intersection between cognitive processes and the material entities produced by them. The result is an innovative contribution to both Classics and New Materialism studies, uncovering the intimate and reciprocal interaction between minds and matter as central to ancient Greek aesthetic experience.