A Cognitively Inflected Aesthetics of the Greek Symposion

Project Information

COGNAESTHSYMP

Grant agreement ID: 800610

DOI

10.3030/800610

Project closed

EC signature date 30 April 2018

Start date 1 March 2019

End date 14 June 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 173 076,00

EU contribution

€ 173 076,00

Coordinated by

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COGNAESTHSYMP (A Cognitively Inflected Aesthetics of the Greek Symposion)

Reporting period: 2019-03-01 to 2021-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The most exciting and challenging development in the humanities in the last decade or so has been the recognition that literature and the arts are a fitting object of cognitive inquiry: literature and art in fact are cognition in action, they are both vehicle and instrument of human thought. No body of art lends itself better to be viewed in this way than the visual and verbal art of the ancient Greek symposion. This ritualized wine-drinking party of Greek male citizens was the occasion for the performance of much extant Greek lyric poetry as well as the context of use of most Greek black- and red-figure painted pottery.

This project aimed to apply the documented advantages of a cognitively inflected approach to the particular case of the poetry and painted pottery of the ancient Greek symposion. Its objectives were to produce a methodology for applying the notion of embodied cognition to both the textual and visual sources belonging to the discourse of the symposion, and to attempt to explain the particular affordances of sympotic discourse, in order to explain in turn why sympotic discourse was such a successful way of thinking for Greeks of the archaic and Classical period (and consequently in later eras). In so doing it aimed to produce better interpretations of sympotic literature and painting than have thus far been available, but also to exploit the unique synergy of the language and images in sympotic discourse to cast new light on the peculiarities and interplay of visual and verbal cognition and thus contribute to the cognitive debate beyond the discipline of Classics.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the project I have studied extensively both the texts of sympotic poetic fragments and paintings on sympotic vessels, as well as the secondary literature on them and on the application of cognitive approaches to both literature and visual art. I have made a selection of sympotic poetry and pottery for in-depth discussion. I have conducted a study of painted vases at the Musée du Louvre, although its continuation was impeded first by strikes, then by the closure of the Greek vases wing, and finally by the widespread closures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. I have drafted discussions of both a selection of sympotic pottery and a selection of sympotic poetry from a cognitive angle, and a cognitively inflected comparison of the two. I have also undertaken an article comparing one sympotic poem (Bacchylides fr. 20) and a series of sympotic vases. I have had training on working with ancient Greek vases at the Musée du Louvre. I have also attended a seminar series on cognitive approaches in the humanities at the École Normale Supérieure. Several occasions of dissemination in the form of lectures and seminars in France, Greece, Italy, and Japan have had to be postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The core of the project - interrogating verbal and visual discourse in tandem as manifestations of a unified sympotic cognitive ecology, exploiting the unique synergy of verbal and visual art in the symposion - entailed significant progress beyond the state of the art in a thoroughly new direction. Also on the level of methodology, the interdisciplinary combination of literary-critical and art-historical studies inflected with cognitive approaches was novel, as was the close alliance of the concepts of embodied cognition and cognitive affordances. Altogether the application of cognitive approaches to art of antiquity is still relatively new, and in the case of sympotic material it breaks new ground. Upon publication, the resulting monograph will impress a decisive shift from current ways of thinking about the Greek symposion, and about verbal and visual art and their synergy more generally. This impact will be kick-started by the separate publication of the article described above.

Sympotic vase from the Musée du Louvre