Greek Poetry in the Age of Ephemerality-轻识

This book suggests that poetry offers a way to remain in the world – not only by declarations of intent or the promotion of remembrance, but also through the durable physicality of its practice. Whether carved in stone or wood, printed onto a page, beat out by a mimetic or rhythmic body, or humming in the mind, poems are meant to engrave and adhere. Ancient Greek poetry exhibits a particularly acute awareness of change, decay, and the ephemerality inherent in mortality. Yet it couples its presentation of this awareness with an offering of meaningful embodiment in shifting forms that are aligned with, yet subtly manipulative of, mortal time. Sarah Nooter's argument ranges widely across authors and genres, from Homer and the Homeric Hymns through Sappho and Archilochus to Pindar and Aeschylus. The book will be compelling reading for all those interested in Greek literature and in poetry more broadly.

Professor Nooter writes about Greek drama and modern reception, and also about poetry, the voice, embodiment, and performance. Her first book is When Heroes Sing: Sophocles and the Shifting Soundscape of Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 2012; pb 2016). Here she explores the lyrically powerful voices of Sophocles’ heroes, arguing that their characterization is built from the poetical material of lyric genres and that this poeticity (as she calls it) lends a unique blend of power and impotence to Sophoclean heroes that places them in the mold of archaic poets as they were imagined in Classical Greece. Professor Nooter’s second book, The Mortal Voice in the Tragedies of Aeschylus (Cambridge University Press, 2017; pb 2022), is on voice in Aeschylus and Greek poetry and thought more generally. Her most recent book is called Greek Poetry in the Age of Ephemerality (Cambridge University Press, 2023). This text consists of a series of essays on Greek poems, understood as attempts at embodiment through performance and objecthood in the face of the ephemerality of human life. She is also working on a volume called How to Be Queer: An Ancient Guide to Sexuality (under review with Princeton University Press), and continues to work on an ongoing project on modern African drama and ancient Greek tragedy. She has co-edited a book called Sound and the Ancient Senses with Shane Butler (Routledge, 2019) and is now co-editing a volume with Mario Telò entitled Radical Formalisms: Reading, Theory and the Boundaries of the Classical (Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming). Finally, she has offered some advice on applying to and choosing graduate programs in Classics in Eidolon, and as Editor-in-Chief of Classical Philology has edited special issues on Poetry and Its Means, Athens: Stage, Page, Assembly, and Tragedy: Reconstruction and Repair.