Michelle Zerba
Louisiana State University, English and Classics, Faculty Member
- I hold the Maggie B. Martin Chair of Rhetoric and Classical Studies at Louisiana State University where I have a spli... moreI hold the Maggie B. Martin Chair of Rhetoric and Classical Studies at Louisiana State University where I have a split appointment in the Departments of English and Foreign Languages and teach in the Ogden Honors College. I study classical receptions ranging from Homer and global modernism to ancient skepticism and early modern literature and art. My new projects include theorizing Mediterranean and Caribbean studies and the long reception history of the ancient mystery cults.edit
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This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these... more
This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these important authors, Michelle Zerba argues that doubt is a defining experience in antiquity and the Renaissance, one that constantly challenges the limits of thought and representation. The wide-ranging discussion considers issues that run the gamut from tragic loss to comic bombast, from psychological collapse to skeptical dexterity and from solitary reflection to political improvisation in civic contexts and puts Greek and Roman treatments of doubt into dialogue not only with sixteenth-century texts but with contemporary works as well. Using the past to engage questions of vital concern to our time, Zerba demonstrates that although doubt sometimes has destructive consequences, it can also be conducive to tolerance, discovery and conversation across sociopolitical boundaries.
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Broadening the interdisciplinary base of study on Renaissance Homer, this essay looks to cassone (wedding chest) painting in the Quattrocento to explore how the textual reception of the “Odyssey” was enriched by the visual arts. As... more
Broadening the interdisciplinary base of study on Renaissance Homer, this essay looks to cassone (wedding chest) painting in the Quattrocento to explore how the textual reception of the “Odyssey” was enriched by the visual arts. As artifacts, wedding chests had a role in the public sphere, though they were destined for the private, and they made the epic available to audiences of nonelites. Nausicaa is a key figure, merging the vernacular courtly love tradition and romance. In working across the fields of literary study and art history, this essay introduces new critical concepts to account for the complexities of Renaissance reception of Homer.
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There was a tradition in antiquity, recorded by Diogenes Laertius, that Homer was the founder of philosophical scepticism, for ‘regarding the same questions, he sets forth different answers at different times and is not at all dogmatic in... more
There was a tradition in antiquity, recorded by Diogenes Laertius, that Homer was the founder of philosophical scepticism, for ‘regarding the same questions, he sets forth different answers at different times and is not at all dogmatic in what he says’ ( , Lives of the Philosophers, 9.71). By way of evidence, Diogenes notes that Philo of Athens used to say of Pyrrho that he had great admiration for Homer (9.67) and was fond of repeating two passages from the Iliad: 1) the line from Glaucus’ battlefield dialogue with Diomedes, ‘as leaves on trees, such is the life of man’ ( , Il. 6.146), and 2) the verses spoken by Achilles in his taunt to the hapless Lycaon when he tells the Trojan, staring death in the face, that his appeal for mercy is empty since ‘Patroclus, much your better, has also died’ ( , Il. 21.107). In addition to such passages, which concern the instability and folly of human endeavours, Diogenes quotes from Aeneas’ speech to Achilles in Iliad 20.248–50 as an illustration of a Homeric character speaking of the equal value ( , 9.73) of contradictory sayings, a major topic of ancient scepticism: ‘Twisted is the tongue of mortals, many the stories in it | of all kinds, and great is the range of words scattered hither and yon. | Whatever word you say, one like it will you hear’ ( | , / , Il. 20.248–50). Sextus Empiricus confirms Pyrrho’s love of Homer (Against the Grammarians, 272, 281) and observes that Timon of Phlius, a follower of Pyrrho, identified Xenophanes as a dogmatist for asserting that ‘the all is one’ and for deriding the deception found in Homer, which reveals the illusoriness of what reaches us through the senses (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1.224). One thinks, in this connection, of Agamemnon’s dream in Iliad 2, though Sextus does not mention it. As these examples suggest, the Homeric epics adumbrate sceptical ways of thinking that are thematized in later philosophical discussion, though evidence in the texts of Diogenes and Sextus supportive of the view is sporadic, unelaborated and drawn mostly from the Iliad.1 The topic, however, has not been studied in any depth. 295
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To speak of monstrous beauty is to address a conundrum. The words collide: monsters and beauties seem dramatically different, if not diametrically opposed. To merge them entails a confounding of the familiar, a mingling of what is usually... more
To speak of monstrous beauty is to address a conundrum. The words collide: monsters and beauties seem dramatically different, if not diametrically opposed. To merge them entails a confounding of the familiar, a mingling of what is usually understood as irreconcilable. Yet we recognize them when we see them. Theriomorphic creatures figure prominently in this canon of misfits, and frequent among them are female hybrids, bizarre, malevolent, violent. Several notorious mythical beings of the ancient world, notably, the Siren, the Lamia, the Sphinx, and the Medusa, epitomize the phenomenon, and they fill the pages of studies that examine the cultural environments in which they have emerged and the transhistorical resonances that keep them alive. But the questions run deep, and the continuing provocation these creatures exercise means they are always calling for new appraisals. What happens when art confronts us with outlandish figures that amalgamate beauty and monstrosity? What insights does it seek to elicit in disturbing our mental furniture and upending our cognitive expectations? Focusing on Caravaggio’s Medusa, this paper searches out some of the answers that are emerging from neuroaesthetics, a burgeoning field of interdisciplinary exploration that is bringing science, the arts, and the humanities into new dialogue about some very old questions.
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Research Interests: Philosophy, Classics, Renaissance Humanism, Cicero, Classical philology, and 9 moreRhetorics in the Renaissance, Morality, History and archaeology, Ancient skepticism, Language Culture and Communication, Ancient Roman Rhetoric, Ciceronian Philosophy and the Late Roman Republic, Classical Philology, and Classical Studies
x, 241 pages ; 24 cm.Item embargoed for five year
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Broadening the interdisciplinary base of study on Renaissance Homer, this essay looks to cassone (wedding chest) painting in the Quattrocento to explore how the textual reception of the “Odyssey” was enriched by the visual arts. As... more
Broadening the interdisciplinary base of study on Renaissance Homer, this essay looks to cassone (wedding chest) painting in the Quattrocento to explore how the textual reception of the “Odyssey” was enriched by the visual arts. As artifacts, wedding chests had a role in the public sphere, though they were destined for the private, and they made the epic available to audiences of nonelites. Nausicaa is a key figure, merging the vernacular courtly love tradition and romance. In working across the fields of literary study and art history, this essay introduces new critical concepts to account for the complexities of Renaissance reception of Homer.
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The locution Medea hypokrites is not likely to have circulated in classical Greece. In the fifth century, the term hypokrites had come to designate an actor on the Greek stage, typically an actor who took a prominent role in the dialogue.... more
The locution Medea hypokrites is not likely to have circulated in classical Greece. In the fifth century, the term hypokrites had come to designate an actor on the Greek stage, typically an actor who took a prominent role in the dialogue. It therefore would have been used of the individual who may have been Euripides’ chief tragic actor, a certain Cephisophon, but it was not used of the character whom he played. The origin of the Greek term for actor has
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The locution Medea hypokrites is not likely to have circulated in classical Greece. In the fifth century, the term hypokrites had come to designate an actor on the Greek stage, typically an actor who took a prominent role in the dialogue.... more
The locution Medea hypokrites is not likely to have circulated in classical Greece. In the fifth century, the term hypokrites had come to designate an actor on the Greek stage, typically an actor who took a prominent role in the dialogue. It therefore would have been used of the individual who may have been Euripides’ chief tragic actor, a certain Cephisophon, but it was not used of the character whom he played. The origin of the Greek term for actor has
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The ancient Greeks and Romans have appeared in a remarkable way on the postmodern landscape. Once the target of multicultural attacks, they have been increasingly treated by such thinkers as Alastair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Martha... more
The ancient Greeks and Romans have appeared in a remarkable way on the postmodern landscape. Once the target of multicultural attacks, they have been increasingly treated by such thinkers as Alastair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, Alexander Nehamas, and others as a repository of ideas about how to live our lives in the twentieth-first century. Among the figures who have profited most by this revival is Cicero. One of the recent approaches to his work, which portrays him as the practitioner of a politics of judgment aimed at collective decision-making, has been salutary in helping us appreciate anew the ways in which conviction, controversy, and emotion operate in deliberative settings that require the arts of persuasion. The Cicero who emerges from this treatment is a man for our times, one who speaks to the ailments of our politically estranged culture and its suspicion of rhetoric. A second and similarly provocative treatment of Cicero portrays him as the agent of a p...
Research Interests: Philosophy and Skepticism
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Machiavelli's advocacy of force and fraud in the conduct of politics is the key teaching that has secured his reputation as “Machiavellian” and that has led to the conception of The Prince as the first document in the Western... more
Machiavelli's advocacy of force and fraud in the conduct of politics is the key teaching that has secured his reputation as “Machiavellian” and that has led to the conception of The Prince as the first document in the Western tradition to lay bare the dark, demonic underside of civic humanism. But this interpretation overlooks the degree to which a politics of intense competition and personal rivalry inhabits the humanist vision from antiquity, producing an ethics of expediency and a rhetoric of imposture that seeks to mask its alertness to advantage behind the guise of integrity and service. This vision is nowhere more apparent than in Cicero's De Oratore, which exerted a powerful influence on the Italian humanists of the quattrocentro in whose direct descent Machiavelli stands. Deception, to put it simply, is an acknowledged and vital element in civic humanism long before The Prince. The difference is that Cicero typically couches it in a sacrificial rhetoric that is euphemistically inflected while Machiavelli opts for a hard-edged rhetoric of administrative efficiency to make his case. But the stylistic differences, important as they are, should not mask the essential affinity between the Machiavellian doctrine of princely fraud and the Ciceronian ethics of gentlemanly dissimulation
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Machiavelli's advocacy of force and fraud in the conduct of politics is the key teaching that has secured his reputation as “Machiavellian” and that has led to the conception of The Prince as the first document in the Western... more
Machiavelli's advocacy of force and fraud in the conduct of politics is the key teaching that has secured his reputation as “Machiavellian” and that has led to the conception of The Prince as the first document in the Western tradition to lay bare the dark, demonic underside of civic humanism. But this interpretation overlooks the degree to which a politics of intense competition and personal rivalry inhabits the humanist vision from antiquity, producing an ethics of expediency and a rhetoric of imposture that seeks to mask its alertness to advantage behind the guise of integrity and service. This vision is nowhere more apparent than in Cicero's De Oratore, which exerted a powerful influence on the Italian humanists of the quattrocentro in whose direct descent Machiavelli stands. Deception, to put it simply, is an acknowledged and vital element in civic humanism long before The Prince. The difference is that Cicero typically couches it in a sacrificial rhetoric that is euphe...
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... About this magical-religious nexus Walter Burkert remarks that although shamanism may not have influenced the development of the Greek free soul, the scholarly debate about shamanism "has in any case performed the useful function... more
... About this magical-religious nexus Walter Burkert remarks that although shamanism may not have influenced the development of the Greek free soul, the scholarly debate about shamanism "has in any case performed the useful function of taking the so-called [shamanistic ...
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Tout oppose la Méditerranée et la Caraïbe. Des zones géographiques différenciées, des espaces insulaires spécifiques, des cultures aux antipodes. Cette opposition, loin de la réduire, Édouard Glissant la reprend fréquemment, comme une... more
Tout oppose la Méditerranée et la Caraïbe. Des zones géographiques différenciées, des espaces insulaires spécifiques, des cultures aux antipodes. Cette opposition, loin de la réduire, Édouard Glissant la reprend fréquemment, comme une ligne de partage entre l'éclat et l'obscur. Ne rappelons ici, à ce titre, qu'un passage des Entretiens de Baton Rouge (2008) : Je parlerai maintenant de l'opposition entre la Méditerranée et la mer Caraïbe. Je crois que la Méditerranée, c'est sa grandeur historique, est une mer qui concentre. Ce n'est pas par hasard que les plus grandes religions monothéistes sont nées sur les collines, dans les villes et dans les déserts qui entourent ses rives. C'est une mer centrée sur l'Un, qui entretient autour d'elle la multiplicité du divers, et l'incline tragiquement vers cette unité. C'est la mer du gouffre fondamental, de l'abîme intérieur qui détermine toutes les philosophies de l'Un. Je crois que les
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The Mediterranean and the Caribbean are frequently opposed as different geographical zones and distinct insular regions with contrasting cultures. One of the most important writers of the French Caribbean, Édouard Glissant, whose work... more
The Mediterranean and the Caribbean are frequently opposed as different geographical zones and distinct insular regions with contrasting cultures. One of the most important writers of the French Caribbean, Édouard Glissant, whose work reflects deeply on colonialism, slavery, and racism, has formulated an influential concept of Antillanité, or Caribbeanness, that has frequent recourse to this opposition. He uses it to emphasize what he conceives as a line of demarcation between a sea of brilliant explosion outward (l'éclat) and a sea of inward oriented concentration (l'obscur). One of the several passages in which he discusses this distinction appears in a conversation collected in the volume, Interviews in Baton Rouge (Entretiens à Baton Rouge; italics and bold are those of the authors): I will speak now of the opposition between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean Sea. I think that the Mediterranean, because of its historical grandeur, is a concentrating sea. It is not by accident that the greatest monotheistic religions have been born in its hills and valleys and in the deserts that surround its shores. It
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Broadening the interdisciplinary base of study on Renaissance Homer, this essay looks to cassone (wedding chest) painting in the Quattrocento to explore how the textual reception of the " Odyssey " was enriched by the visual arts. As... more
Broadening the interdisciplinary base of study on Renaissance Homer, this essay looks to cassone (wedding chest) painting in the Quattrocento to explore how the textual reception of the " Odyssey " was enriched by the visual arts. As artifacts, wedding chests had a role in the public sphere, though they were destined for the private, and they made the epic available to audiences of nonelites. Nausicaa is a key figure, merging the vernacular courtly love tradition and romance. In working across the fields of literary study and art history, this essay introduces new critical concepts to account for the complexities of Renaissance reception of Homer.
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Broadening the interdisciplinary base of study on Renaissance Homer, this essay looks to cassone (wedding chest) painting in the Quattrocento to explore how the textual reception of the " Odyssey " was enriched by the visual arts. As... more
Broadening the interdisciplinary base of study on Renaissance Homer, this essay looks to cassone (wedding chest) painting in the Quattrocento to explore how the textual reception of the " Odyssey " was enriched by the visual arts. As artifacts, wedding chests had a role in the public sphere, though they were destined for the private, and they made the epic available to audiences of nonelites. Nausicaa is a key figure, merging the vernacular courtly love tradition and romance. In working across the fields of literary study and art history, this essay introduces new critical concepts to account for the complexities of Renaissance reception of Homer.
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This paper is a draft of the Introduction to a book manuscript that is forthcoming. Do not quote without permission of author.
Research Interests: Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Classics, Reception Studies, Reception Theory, and 15 moreGender and Sexuality, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Black Internationalism, World Literature, Classical Reception Studies, Global Modernism, Aimé Césaire, Transnational Studies, Literary Theory and Criticism, Black Classicism, Cavafy, Homeric studies, Virginia Woolf Studies, and Homeric epic
This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these... more
This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these important authors, Michelle Zerba argues that doubt is a defining experience in antiquity and the Renaissance, one that constantly challenges the limits of thought and representation. The wide-ranging discussion considers issues that run the gamut from tragic loss to comic bombast, from psychological collapse to skeptical dexterity, and from solitary reflection to political improvisation in civic contexts and puts Greek and Roman treatments of doubt into dialogue not only with sixteenth-century texts, but with contemporary works as well. Using the past to engage questions of vital concern to our time, Zerba demonstrates that although doubt sometimes has destructive consequences, it can also be conducive to tolerance, discovery, and conversation across sociopolitical boundaries.
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This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these... more
This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these important authors, Michelle Zerba argues that doubt is a defining experience in antiquity and the Renaissance, one that constantly challenges the limits of thought and representation. The wide-ranging discussion considers issues that run the gamut from tragic loss to comic bombast, from psychological collapse to skeptical dexterity, and from solitary reflection to political improvisation in civic contexts and puts Greek and Roman treatments of doubt into dialogue not only with sixteenth-century texts, but with contemporary works as well. Using the past to engage questions of vital concern to our time, Zerba demonstrates that although doubt sometimes has destructive consequences, it can also be conducive to tolerance, discovery, and conversation across sociopolitical boundaries.
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This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these... more
This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these important authors, Michelle Zerba argues that doubt is a defining experience in antiquity and the Renaissance, one that constantly challenges the limits of thought and representation. The wide-ranging discussion considers issues that run the gamut from tragic loss to comic bombast, from psychological collapse to skeptical dexterity, and from solitary reflection to political improvisation in civic contexts and puts Greek and Roman treatments of doubt into dialogue not only with sixteenth-century texts, but with contemporary works as well. Using the past to engage questions of vital concern to our time, Zerba demonstrates that although doubt sometimes has destructive consequences, it can also be conducive to tolerance, discovery, and conversation across sociopolitical boundaries.
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Modern Odysseys explores three major writers in global modernism from the Mediterranean, Anglo-European Britain, and the Caribbean whose ground-breaking literary works have never been studied together before. Using language as an... more
Modern Odysseys explores three major writers in global modernism from the Mediterranean, Anglo-European Britain, and the Caribbean whose ground-breaking literary works have never been studied together before. Using language as an instrument of revolution and social change, C.P. Cavafy, Virginia Woolf, and Aimé Césaire gave expression to forms of human experience we now associate with modernity: homoeroticism, transsexuality, and racial consciousness. Odyssean tropes of diffusion, isolation, passage, and return give form to their writing, but in ways that invite us to reconsider and revise the basic premises of reception studies and intellectual history. Combining close readings of literary texts with the study of interviews, essays, diaries, and letters, Modern Odysseys argues for a revisionary account of how to approach relationships between antiquity and twentieth-century modernisms. Written for a broad audience, it also makes a strong case for the importance of keeping alive the study of poetry and fiction in the original languages under the pressures of a lingua franca that can flatten cultural difference. The book makes contributions to the fields of comparative literature, classical reception, global modernism, women and gender studies, literary transnationalism, black classicism, and the study of Homeric poetry, especially, the Odyssey.
Research Interests: Comparative Literature, Transnationalism, Caribbean Literature, Modern Greek literature, Caribbean Studies, and 11 moreModernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Black Internationalism, Classical Reception Studies, Global Modernism, Aimé Césaire, Women and Gender Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, Cavafy, Homeric studies, and Homeric Reception
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“Eleusis at the Intersection of Antiquity and Modernity: Mystery, Initiation, and Secrecy in the 21st Century” Abstract Michelle Zerba The official shutting down of the Eleusinian mysteries around 400 CE after a millennium of worship... more
“Eleusis at the Intersection of Antiquity and Modernity:
Mystery, Initiation, and Secrecy in the 21st Century”
Abstract
Michelle Zerba
The official shutting down of the Eleusinian mysteries around 400 CE after a millennium of worship did not bring an end to Eleusis or the mysteria. What began as a ritual in honor of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone ramified over deep time and across geographical expanses into a variety of discourses that have shaped the concept of mystery as we know it today. This includes the incorporation of the term into Christian theology, Gnosticism, and secret societies whose lore sometimes connected them with a “golden thread” of esoteric wisdom extending back to Eleusis. Beyond religion, mystery has been sexualized to sell romance, exoticized to promote the exploration of strange places, and cosmologized in narratives about the enigmas of the universe. What about these associations is related to ancient meanings that grew out of the Eleusinian cult? Why has mystery continued, long after the suppression of the mysteria, to pique our imagination and resist domestication?
While scholarship on the ancient mysteria abounds, none of it has tackled such questions from the perspectives opened by translation studies. Particularly relevant is the recent turn toward cultural translation, which explores how ideology, modes of production, the currency of cliques and trends, and tensions between the local and the global affect intra- and interlingual exchange. This paper seeks to advance the discussion of mystery and the mysteria within such a theoretical frame by juxtaposing two historical moments: 1) the ancient intralingual translation of mysteria-vocabulary in Greek into philosophy, particularly in Plato, and 2) the contemporary interlingual translation of this vocabulary into the discourses of new religious movements and cognitive neuroscience, which has begun exploring the phenomenology of extraordinary spiritual encounters through brain mapping.
Linking these two recent discursive fields is what some have called the “archaic revival” in our time, which has been marked by a return to festival and ritualized forms of liminality. Here Eleusis has helped structure a set of loosely connected tropes in the cultural imaginary that combine postmodern forms of expression with a reverence for the pagan past. It has also functioned as a conduit for the return of initiation as a vital dimension of mystery—one that modern subjects are attempting to recreate in alternative culture heterotopias and that science is studying because of the light it casts on altered states of consciousness and transformational experience. This invites a closer look at the relationship between initiation and secrecy, the two main vectors of the Eleusinian mysteria.
Mystery, Initiation, and Secrecy in the 21st Century”
Abstract
Michelle Zerba
The official shutting down of the Eleusinian mysteries around 400 CE after a millennium of worship did not bring an end to Eleusis or the mysteria. What began as a ritual in honor of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone ramified over deep time and across geographical expanses into a variety of discourses that have shaped the concept of mystery as we know it today. This includes the incorporation of the term into Christian theology, Gnosticism, and secret societies whose lore sometimes connected them with a “golden thread” of esoteric wisdom extending back to Eleusis. Beyond religion, mystery has been sexualized to sell romance, exoticized to promote the exploration of strange places, and cosmologized in narratives about the enigmas of the universe. What about these associations is related to ancient meanings that grew out of the Eleusinian cult? Why has mystery continued, long after the suppression of the mysteria, to pique our imagination and resist domestication?
While scholarship on the ancient mysteria abounds, none of it has tackled such questions from the perspectives opened by translation studies. Particularly relevant is the recent turn toward cultural translation, which explores how ideology, modes of production, the currency of cliques and trends, and tensions between the local and the global affect intra- and interlingual exchange. This paper seeks to advance the discussion of mystery and the mysteria within such a theoretical frame by juxtaposing two historical moments: 1) the ancient intralingual translation of mysteria-vocabulary in Greek into philosophy, particularly in Plato, and 2) the contemporary interlingual translation of this vocabulary into the discourses of new religious movements and cognitive neuroscience, which has begun exploring the phenomenology of extraordinary spiritual encounters through brain mapping.
Linking these two recent discursive fields is what some have called the “archaic revival” in our time, which has been marked by a return to festival and ritualized forms of liminality. Here Eleusis has helped structure a set of loosely connected tropes in the cultural imaginary that combine postmodern forms of expression with a reverence for the pagan past. It has also functioned as a conduit for the return of initiation as a vital dimension of mystery—one that modern subjects are attempting to recreate in alternative culture heterotopias and that science is studying because of the light it casts on altered states of consciousness and transformational experience. This invites a closer look at the relationship between initiation and secrecy, the two main vectors of the Eleusinian mysteria.
Research Interests:
The official shutting down of the Eleusinian mysteries around 400 CE after a millennium of worship did not bring an end to Eleusis or the mysteria. What began as a ritual in honor of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone ramified over deep... more
The official shutting down of the Eleusinian mysteries around 400 CE after a millennium of worship did not bring an end to Eleusis or the mysteria. What began as a ritual in honor of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone ramified over deep time and across geographical expanses into a variety of discourses that have shaped the concept of mystery as we know it today. This includes the incorporation of the term into Christian theology, Gnosticism, and secret societies whose lore sometimes connected them with a “golden thread” of esoteric wisdom extending back to Eleusis. Beyond religion, mystery has been sexualized to sell romance, exoticized to promote the exploration of strange places, and cosmologized in narratives about the enigmas of the universe. What about these associations is related to ancient meanings that grew out of the Eleusinian cult? Why has mystery continued, long after the suppression of the mysteria, to pique our imagination and resist domestication?
While scholarship on the ancient mysteria abounds, none of it has tackled such questions from the perspectives opened by translation studies. Particularly relevant is the recent turn toward cultural translation, which explores how ideology, modes of production, the currency of cliques and trends, and tensions between the local and the global affect intra- and interlingual exchange. This paper seeks to advance the discussion of mystery and the mysteria within such a theoretical frame by juxtaposing two historical moments: 1) the ancient intralingual translation of mysteria-vocabulary in Greek into philosophy, particularly in Plato, and 2) the contemporary interlingual translation of this vocabulary into the discourses of new religious movements and cognitive neuroscience, which has begun exploring the phenomenology of extraordinary spiritual encounters through brain mapping.
Linking these two recent discursive fields is what some have called the “archaic revival” in our time, which has been marked by a return to festival and ritualized forms of liminality. Here Eleusis has helped structure a set of loosely connected tropes in the cultural imaginary that combine postmodern forms of expression with a reverence for the pagan past. It has also functioned as a conduit for the return of initiation as a vital dimension of mystery—one that modern subjects are attempting to recreate in alternative culture heterotopias and that science is studying because of the light it casts on altered states of consciousness and transformational experience. This invites a closer look at the relationship between initiation and secrecy, the two main vectors of the Eleusinian mysteria.
While scholarship on the ancient mysteria abounds, none of it has tackled such questions from the perspectives opened by translation studies. Particularly relevant is the recent turn toward cultural translation, which explores how ideology, modes of production, the currency of cliques and trends, and tensions between the local and the global affect intra- and interlingual exchange. This paper seeks to advance the discussion of mystery and the mysteria within such a theoretical frame by juxtaposing two historical moments: 1) the ancient intralingual translation of mysteria-vocabulary in Greek into philosophy, particularly in Plato, and 2) the contemporary interlingual translation of this vocabulary into the discourses of new religious movements and cognitive neuroscience, which has begun exploring the phenomenology of extraordinary spiritual encounters through brain mapping.
Linking these two recent discursive fields is what some have called the “archaic revival” in our time, which has been marked by a return to festival and ritualized forms of liminality. Here Eleusis has helped structure a set of loosely connected tropes in the cultural imaginary that combine postmodern forms of expression with a reverence for the pagan past. It has also functioned as a conduit for the return of initiation as a vital dimension of mystery—one that modern subjects are attempting to recreate in alternative culture heterotopias and that science is studying because of the light it casts on altered states of consciousness and transformational experience. This invites a closer look at the relationship between initiation and secrecy, the two main vectors of the Eleusinian mysteria.
Research Interests:
The official shutting down of the Eleusinian mysteries around 400 CE after a millennium of worship did not bring an end to Eleusis or the mysteria. What began as a ritual in honor of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone ramified over deep... more
The official shutting down of the Eleusinian mysteries around 400 CE after a millennium of worship did not bring an end to Eleusis or the mysteria. What began as a ritual in honor of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone ramified over deep time and across geographical expanses into a variety of discourses that have shaped the concept of mystery as we know it today. This includes the incorporation of the term into Christian theology, Gnosticism, and secret societies whose lore sometimes connected them with a “golden thread” of esoteric wisdom extending back to Eleusis. Beyond religion, mystery has been sexualized to sell romance, exoticized to promote the exploration of strange places, and cosmologized in narratives about the enigmas of the universe. What about these associations is related to ancient meanings that grew out of the Eleusinian cult? Why has mystery continued, long after the suppression of the mysteria, to pique our imagination and resist domestication?
While scholarship on the ancient mysteria abounds, none of it has tackled such questions from the perspectives opened by translation studies. Particularly relevant is the recent turn toward cultural translation, which explores how ideology, modes of production, the currency of cliques and trends, and tensions between the local and the global affect intra- and interlingual exchange. This paper seeks to advance the discussion of mystery and the mysteria within such a theoretical frame by juxtaposing two historical moments: 1) the ancient intralingual translation of mysteria-vocabulary in Greek into philosophy, particularly in Plato, and 2) the contemporary interlingual translation of this vocabulary into the discourses of new religious movements and cognitive neuroscience, which has begun exploring the phenomenology of extraordinary spiritual encounters through brain mapping.
Linking these two recent discursive fields is what some have called the “archaic revival” in our time, which has been marked by a return to festival and ritualized forms of liminality. Here Eleusis has helped structure a set of loosely connected tropes in the cultural imaginary that combine postmodern forms of expression with a reverence for the pagan past. It has also functioned as a conduit for the return of initiation as a vital dimension of mystery—one that modern subjects are attempting to recreate in alternative culture heterotopias and that science is studying because of the light it casts on altered states of consciousness and transformational experience. This invites a closer look at the relationship between initiation and secrecy, the two main vectors of the Eleusinian mysteria.
While scholarship on the ancient mysteria abounds, none of it has tackled such questions from the perspectives opened by translation studies. Particularly relevant is the recent turn toward cultural translation, which explores how ideology, modes of production, the currency of cliques and trends, and tensions between the local and the global affect intra- and interlingual exchange. This paper seeks to advance the discussion of mystery and the mysteria within such a theoretical frame by juxtaposing two historical moments: 1) the ancient intralingual translation of mysteria-vocabulary in Greek into philosophy, particularly in Plato, and 2) the contemporary interlingual translation of this vocabulary into the discourses of new religious movements and cognitive neuroscience, which has begun exploring the phenomenology of extraordinary spiritual encounters through brain mapping.
Linking these two recent discursive fields is what some have called the “archaic revival” in our time, which has been marked by a return to festival and ritualized forms of liminality. Here Eleusis has helped structure a set of loosely connected tropes in the cultural imaginary that combine postmodern forms of expression with a reverence for the pagan past. It has also functioned as a conduit for the return of initiation as a vital dimension of mystery—one that modern subjects are attempting to recreate in alternative culture heterotopias and that science is studying because of the light it casts on altered states of consciousness and transformational experience. This invites a closer look at the relationship between initiation and secrecy, the two main vectors of the Eleusinian mysteria.