Language of Objects: Deixis in Descriptive Greek Epigrams

Federica Scicolone, Ph.D. (2018), King’s College London, is a Research Fellow in Greek Language and Literature at the University of Pavia. She works primarily on Greek literary and inscribed epigram, and on the interaction between text and context.

"This is an ambitious book. It offers a broad survey of the mechanisms by which different forms of inscribed and literary epigrams communicate. It brings together some of the most important and well-known inscriptional and literary epigrams from antiquity alongside other less-discussed examples in order to offer new insights on the relationship between text and object. (...) the author capably explicates texts from a wide range of eras. The book offers an impressive range of material and useful reflections on the literary elements of ancient epigraphic poetry. Scholars working on ancient epigram and ancient ekphrasis would be advised to consult it."Matthew Chaldekas in BMCR 2025.04.29

• AcknowledgmentsPrefaceList of AbbreviationsList of FiguresGlossary1 Deixis in Epigram: An Introduction1.1 Aims and Scope1.2 History of the Epigrammatic Genre1.3 Mapping a Tradition: Descriptive Language in Greek Literature1.4 Literary Review1.5 A Modern Conceptualisation of Deixis2 Deixis am Phantasma in Epigrammatic Contexts: Strategies for Interacting with Fictive Frames of Reference2.1 Literary Epigrams on Famous Works of Art2.2 Playing with Imagination: Epigrams on Mirror Imaging and Non-existent ObjectsConclusions3 Ocular Deixis: Strategies for Interacting with Real-Life Material Contexts3.1 Ocular Deixis in Hellenistic Epigrams3.2 Ocular Deixis in the Epigrams from the House of the Epigrams and the ‘House of Propertius’3.3 Ocular Deixis in Greek Epigrams from the Imperial PeriodConclusions4 Deictic Displacement in Descriptive Epigrams from Late Antiquity4.1 Displacement and Visuality in Late Antiquity4.2 Talk of θαῦμα in Descriptive Displaced Epigrams4.3 Talk of κλέος in Funerary Contexts4.4 Talk of Materials in Displaced EpigramsConclusions5 Conclusion: Is Deixis Just an Analytical Tool?5.1 A Holistic Approach5.2 A Model for Future ResearchBibliographyIndex LocorumGeneral Index