Georgia Frank
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780823287024
- eISBN:
- 9780823288908
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823287024.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter examines the role of internal groupings within the biblical episodes retold in Romanos the Melodist’s (ca. 555) hymns (or, kontakia). Performed for liturgical festivals, these sung ...
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This chapter examines the role of internal groupings within the biblical episodes retold in Romanos the Melodist’s (ca. 555) hymns (or, kontakia). Performed for liturgical festivals, these sung sermons allowed congregations to sing along with various biblical groups, whether the three youths in the furnace, the magi, Herod’s army, the Ninevites, or Jesus’s disciples. Shaped by recent work on the collective voices in Greek tragedy, this essay considers how groups allowed congregations to share in the emotional world of the biblical characters, sing for those silenced by ignorance or cowardice, and sing to repent with sinners and repudiate villains.Less
This chapter examines the role of internal groupings within the biblical episodes retold in Romanos the Melodist’s (ca. 555) hymns (or, kontakia). Performed for liturgical festivals, these sung sermons allowed congregations to sing along with various biblical groups, whether the three youths in the furnace, the magi, Herod’s army, the Ninevites, or Jesus’s disciples. Shaped by recent work on the collective voices in Greek tragedy, this essay considers how groups allowed congregations to share in the emotional world of the biblical characters, sing for those silenced by ignorance or cowardice, and sing to repent with sinners and repudiate villains.
Derek Attridge
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198833154
- eISBN:
- 9780191873898
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198833154.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
The fourth to sixth centuries ad witnessed considerable poetic activity, which is the subject of this chapter. Itinerant poets gave performances, and festivals flourished. Poetry in both Latin and ...
More
The fourth to sixth centuries ad witnessed considerable poetic activity, which is the subject of this chapter. Itinerant poets gave performances, and festivals flourished. Poetry in both Latin and Greek was composed, and the reading of poems remained both a public and a private activity. This chapter pays particular attention to two poets: Ausonius, as an example of a poet who wrote for private consumption, and Claudian, whose poetry was performed in public for political ends. The rise of Christianity produced a more popular body of verse derived from Jewish psalmody: hymns in Latin metres that evolved from quantitative to accentual, reflecting the loss of quantitative distinctions in the language. The same loss occurred in Greek, the language of the eastern Empire centred on Constantinople, where one verse composer of particular interest in the sixth century was Romanos the Melodist.Less
The fourth to sixth centuries ad witnessed considerable poetic activity, which is the subject of this chapter. Itinerant poets gave performances, and festivals flourished. Poetry in both Latin and Greek was composed, and the reading of poems remained both a public and a private activity. This chapter pays particular attention to two poets: Ausonius, as an example of a poet who wrote for private consumption, and Claudian, whose poetry was performed in public for political ends. The rise of Christianity produced a more popular body of verse derived from Jewish psalmody: hymns in Latin metres that evolved from quantitative to accentual, reflecting the loss of quantitative distinctions in the language. The same loss occurred in Greek, the language of the eastern Empire centred on Constantinople, where one verse composer of particular interest in the sixth century was Romanos the Melodist.
