Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi – författare

Plato the Choreographer uncovers a previously unexplored dimension of Plato's thought---his deep and inventive engagement with choreography. This study examines major dialogues in which the philosopher envisioned expansive imaginary panoramas of moving bodies that allude to, critique, or radically reconfigure the dance culture of his time. From the soaring and collapsing soul-chariots of the Phaedrus to the Republic's spectacular finale in the Myth of Er, Plato's vivid depictions of kinetic activity offer his readers striking new ways of thinking about embodiment, consciousness, and the structure of the cosmos.Precisely because dance was a vital civic activity of paramount importance in ancient Greece, foregrounding Plato's choreographic imagination sharpens our sense of him as a perceptive cultural critic and often controversial political theorist. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Laws, his final and most overtly legislative dialogue, where he envisions the second-best city---utopian Magnesia---as a vast communal choral ensemble, structured and behaving in accordance with a lawgiver's strict precepts. The aesthetic, political, and cultural implications of such a vision receive sustained scrutiny and questioning throughout this study. Across these analyses, the founding figure of Western metaphysical philosophy emerges as a visionary artist of movement. His thought proves surprisingly relevant to experimental forms of choreography in the modern era.

Frontiers of Pleasure calls into question a number of influential modern notions regarding aesthetics by going back to the very beginnings of aesthetic thought in Greece and raising critical issues regarding conceptions of how one responds to the beautiful. Despite a recent rebirth of interest in aesthetics, extensive discussion of this key cluster of topics has been absent. Anatasia-Erasmia Peponi argues that although the Greek language had no formal term equivalent to the "aesthetic," the notion was deeply rooted in Greek thought. Her analysis centers on a dominant aspect of beauty--the aural--associated with a highly influential sector of culture that comprised both poetry and instrumental music, the "activity of the Muses," or mousikê. The main argument relies on a series of close readings of literary and philosophical texts, from Homer and Plato through Kant, Joyce, and Proust. Through detailed attention to such scenes as Odysseus' encounter with the Sirens and Hermes' playing of his lyre for his brother Apollo, she demonstrates that the most telling moments in the conceptualization of the aesthetic come in the Greeks' debates and struggles over intense models of auditory pleasure. Unlike current tendencies to treat poetry as an early, imperfect mode of meditating upon such issues, Peponi claims that Greek poetry and philosophy employed equally complex, albeit different, ways of articulating notions of aesthetic response. Her approach often leads her to partial or total disagreement with earlier interpretations of some of the most well-known Greek texts of the archaic and classical periods. Frontiers of Pleasure thus suggests an alternative mode of understanding aesthetics in its entirety, freed from some modern preconceptions that have become a hindrance within the field.

Frontiers of Pleasure calls into question a number of influential modern notions regarding aesthetics by going back to the very beginnings of aesthetic thought in Greece and raising critical issues regarding conceptions of how one responds to the beautiful. Despite a recent rebirth of interest in aesthetics, extensive discussion of this key cluster of topics has been absent. Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi argues that although the Greek language had no formal term equivalent to the "aesthetic," the notion was deeply rooted in Greek thought. Her analysis centers on a dominant aspect of beauty--the aural--associated with a highly influential sector of culture that comprised both poetry and instrumental music, the "activity of the Muses," or mousik?. The main argument relies on a series of close readings of literary and philosophical texts, from Homer and Plato through Kant, Joyce, and Proust. Through detailed attention to such scenes as Odysseus'' encounter with the Sirens and Hermes'' playing of his lyre for his brother Apollo, she demonstrates that the most telling moments in the conceptualization of the aesthetic come in the Greeks'' debates and struggles over intense models of auditory pleasure. Unlike current tendencies to treat poetry as an early, imperfect mode of meditating upon such issues, Peponi claims that Greek poetry and philosophy employed equally complex, albeit different, ways of articulating notions of aesthetic response. Her approach often leads her to partial or total disagreement with earlier interpretations of some of the most well-known Greek texts of the archaic and classical periods. Frontiers of Pleasure thus suggests an alternative mode of understanding aesthetics in its entirety, freed from some modern preconceptions that have become a hindrance within the field.