Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art

by: Seaman, K.

Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art
AUTHOR: Kristen Seaman, University of OregonDATE PUBLISHED: April 2020AVAILABILITY: In stockFORMAT: HardbackISBN: 9781108490917

Hellenistic artworks are celebrated for innovations such as narrative, characterization, and description. The most striking examples are works associated with the Hellenistic courts. Their revolutionary appearance is usually attributed to Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East, the start of the Hellenistic kingdoms, and Greek-Eastern interactions. In Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art, Kristen Seaman offers a new approach to Hellenistic art by investigating an internal development in Greek cultural production, notably, advances in rhetoric. Rhetorical education taught kings, artists, and courtiers how to be Greek, giving them a common intellectual and cultural background from which they approached art. Seaman explores how rhetorical techniques helped artists and their royal patrons construct Hellenism through their innovative art in the scholarly atmospheres of Pergamon and Alexandria. Drawing upon artistic, literary, and historical evidence, this interdisciplinary study will be of interest to students and scholars in art and archaeology, Classics, and ancient history.

Explores how rhetoric helped Hellenistic art to look different from the Greek art of previous periods
Uses famous artworks from Pergamon and Alexandria as focal points
Reconstructs the historical context of Hellenistic courts and patronage

Table of Contents
1. Rhetoric, innovation, and the courts
2. Narrative in the Telephos Frieze
3. Personification in the Archelos Relief
4. Ekphrasis in Soso's Unswept Room mosaic
5. Conclusion.

Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art

by: Seaman, K.

• ISBN-13: 9781108490917 / 978-1-108-49091-7
• ISBN-03: 1108490913 / 1-108-49091-3
• Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2020