The Hero's Life Choice. Studies on Heracles at the Crossroads, the Judgement of Paris, and Their Reception

‘Verbalising the Visual and Visualising the Verbal’

Series: 

Author:
Malcolm Davies
Two allegorical ancient Greek stories about a young hero’s career- defining choice are shown in this book to have later been appropriated to radically differing effects. E.g. a male’s choice between female personifications can morph into a female’s choice between the same, or between various male personifications. Never before have so many instances of this process from art, literature, music, even landscape gardening, been culled. Illustrations, mainly colour, many brought into this context for the first time, are conveniently incorporated into the text, thus mimetically mirroring a central theme of the book, the process of ‘visualising the verbal, verbalising the visual.’
Copyright Year:
2023
E-Book (PDF)
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-67895-8
Publication:
04 Sep 2023
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-67894-1
Publication:
06 Sep 2023
Cover The Hero's Life Choice. Studies on Heracles at the Crossroads, the Judgement of Paris, and Their Reception

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Professor Malcolm Davies Ph. D. (1979) has spent his entire academic life at Oxford. He has published 10 books and numerous articles on a wide range of Greek literature, most recently a commentary on lesser and anonymous fragments of Greek lyric poetry (2021).
"What draws one instantly is the pairing. (...) Davies reminds the reader in a section on ‘Prodicus and the Judgement of Paris’ (101-105) that Sophocles in his lost satyr play, Krisis, and Athenaeus 510C had already drawn the parallels between Heracles and Paris. (...) The writing is clear and crisp and shows an amazing grasp of voluminous amounts of material. His respect, and good-humoured affection, for what he examines is everywhere apparent."
George W.M. Harrison in BMCR 2024.04.27
Contents
Preface
List of Illustrations
Editions and Translations, Restricted to Heracles at the Crossroads

Part 1: Heracles at the Crossroads


A Note on Nomenclature

1 Visual Art
 Introduction
 Appendix: Reynolds’ Parody Itself Parodied
 Transition
 A Precocious Heracles at the Crossroads
 The Encounter as Dream-Vision
 Heracles as Christ
 Christ as Heracles
 Variations on the Theme
 Two Iconographically Eccentric Versions: Veronese and Dürer
 Appendix: Georg Stiernhielm’s Hercules
 Heracles at the Crossroads in Eighteenth-Century English Landscape Gardening

2 Music
 Appendix: The Illustrations to Metastasio’s Libretto for Alcide Al Bivio

3 Literature and Drama
 Prodicus and The Judgement of Paris
 Appendix: DE SILENO ET CHROMI ET MNASYLO

4 Pleasure and Virtue Reconciled
 Appendix: Andrew Marvell’s Upon Appleton House

5 Parody and Pastiche
 Final Reflections on Prodicus’ Heracles at the Crossroads
 Appendix: Panofsky’s Hercules Am Scheidewege
 Endnote: The Absence of Visual Depictions of Heracles at the Crossroads from Antiquity

Part 2: The Judgement of Paris


A Note on Nomenclature

6 The Judgement of Paris: The Story’s Original Form
 The Story’s Original Form

7 Medieval Literature and Art

8 Renaissance Art Onwards
 Appendix: Raphael to Manet and Beyond

9 Literature and Drama

10 Music
 Appendix: ‘The Frost, the Sun, and the Wind’

11 Parody and Pastiche
 Endnote: Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress II: The Rake’s Levée
 Postscript and Transition
Annex
 1 Xenophon’s Memorabilia in Modern English Translation
 2 Addison’s Translation of Heracles at the Crossroads
 3 William Shenstone The Judgement of Hercules
 4 Robert Lowth The Choice of Hercules
 5 Georg Friedrich Handel The Choice of Hercules
 6 James Beattie The Judgement of Paris
 7 Thomas Parnell The Judgement of Paris
 8 William Congreve Libretto for The Judgement of Paris
 Richmond Lattimore Hercules at the Crossroads
Bibliography
Index
Academic scholars and libraries, students, the general educated public interested in art, literature, music and the survival of ancient texts and ideas into the modern world.
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