Posts Tagged by weaving
On women and weaving, draft of a two-part Foreword to a work by Hanna Eilittä Psychas, Women Weaving the World: Text and Textile in the Kalevala and Beyond
| May 10, 2018 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy, Guest Post |
2018.05.10 | By Gregory Nagy and David F. Elmer
Women Weaving the World: Text and Textile in the Kalevala and Beyond, by Hanna Eilittä Psychas, was completed in December 2017. It originated as a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Harvard University. The author of Part I of the bipartite Foreword to the online edition of Women Weaving the World, Gregory Nagy, was the supervisor of the thesis, while the author of Part II, David F. Elmer, was the professor designated by Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature to evaluate the thesis. The text of Part II derives from Elmer’s evaluation, which resulted in the grade of summa cum laude for the thesis.
On weaving and sewing as technical terms for ancient Greek verbal arts
| March 20, 2017 | By Ellen Harlizius-Klück and Giovanni Fanfani listed under Guest Post |
2017.03.20 | By Ellen Harlizius-Klück and Giovanni Fanfani
Two researchers from the Deutsches Museum continue the conversation on metaphors for ancient Greek verbal arts.
On weaving and sewing as metaphors for ancient Greek verbal arts
| January 19, 2017 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy |
2017.01.18 | By Gregory Nagy
In the light of new research published on the technologies of fabric work in premodern societies, I have been rethinking my formulations about traditional metaphors that were used in ancient Greek verbal arts for the original purpose of comparing these arts to the arts of weaving and sewing.
Song, interrupted
| March 28, 2016 | By Keith Stone listed under Guest Post |
Further thoughts on the singing of songs of Sappho, inspired by the collegial conversations and shared research that led to the earlier posts by Gregory Nagy and Andromache Karanika and to the more recent post by Ioanna Papadopoulou.
Penelope’s great web: the violent interruption
| March 10, 2016 | By Ioanna Papadopoulou listed under Guest Post |
In the absence of Odysseus Penelope’s fate becomes unstable. Her weaving and unweaving the famous web is emblematic of this instability. Being at the same time a married woman and a numphē (young girl at the age of mariage), and refusing to solve this aporia, she invests weaving with its full metaphorical potential: Penelope rules over the destiny of Ithaca by “analysing” her web each night (alluesken histon). Thus the history of our own word for unraveling complexity—analysis—starts here, in the nocturnal textile activity of the “most powerful feminine mind among Greek women,” to use the Odyssean way of singling out Penelope’s outstanding intelligence.
Weaving while singing Sappho’s songs in Epigram 55 of Posidippus
| January 7, 2016 | By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy, Sappho |
Epigram 55 of Posidippus, a poet who flourished in the third century BCE, refers to the songs of Sappho. That is what I argued already in my postings for 2015.11.19 and 2015.12.03. This epigram, as we can see from those postings, is about a girl named Nikomakhe whose happy young life was sadly interrupted by a premature death. Nostalgically, the words of the epigram recall the happy times when this girl together with her girlfriends were singing the love songs of Sappho, sung one after another. In the present posting for 2016.01.07, I will argue that the poet pictures the singing of Sappho’s songs by these girls as a recurrent event that is simultaneous with their weaving at the loom.
