title: Homer's vividness. An enactive approach
creator: Grethlein, Jonas
creator: Huitink, Luuk
subject: 480
subject: 480 Hellenic languages Classical Greek
description: The vividness of Homeric poetry has been admired since antiquity, but has been difficult to pin down with  precision. It is usually thought to come about because readers are prompted to visualize the storyworld in the form of  mental images seen with the mind’s eye. But this cannot be right, both because there are serious scientific problems  with the concept of ‘pictures in the head’ and because Homer does not offer many detailed descriptions, which are a  prerequisite for eliciting detailed mental images. This article presents a different, and cognitively more realistic, take  on the imageability of Homeric epic, which is based on recent reader-response studies inspired by the enactivist theory  of cognition. These studies make a compelling case for readerly visualization as an embodied response, which does not  depend on bright or detailed mental images. An analysis of the chariot race in Iliad 23 identifies specific features of  what may be called an ‘enactive style’, notably the description of simple bodily actions. The final part of the article  demonstrates that an enactivist take on Homer’s vividness is not incompatible with the ancient concept of enargeia, the  chief rhetorical term with which Homer’s vividness is characterized in ancient criticism.
publisher: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
date: 2017-06-01
type: Article
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/article
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/24734/1/homers_vividness_an_enactive_approach.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00024734
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-247345
identifier:   Grethlein, Jonas ; Huitink, Luuk  (2017) Homer's vividness. An enactive approach.  Journal of Hellenic Studies (137).  pp. 67-91.      
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/24734/
relation: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/AncNar 312321
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: Please see front page of the work (Sorry, Dublin Core plugin does not recognise license id)
language: eng