Intertextuality is a well-known tool in literary criticism and has been widely applied to ancient literature, with, perhaps surprisingly, classical scholarship being at the frontline in developing new theoretical approaches. By contrast, the seemingly parallel notion of intervisuality has only recently begun to appear in classical studies. In fact, intervisuality still lacks a clear definition and scope. Unlike intertextuality, which is consistently used with reference to the interrelationship between texts, the term 'intervisuality' is used not only to trace the interrelationship between images in the visual domain, but also to explore the complex interplay between the visual and the verbal. It is precisely this hybridity that interests us. Intervisuality has proved extremely productive in fields such as art history and visual culture studies. By bringing together a diverse team of scholars, this project aims to bring intervisuality into sharper focus and turn it into a powerful tool to explore the research field traditionally referred to as 'Greek literature'.
Andrea Capra, Durham University, Durham, UK;Lucia Floridi, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
Notes: Some of the essays included in this volume were originally delivered as papers at the conference ‘Intervisuality and Literature in Greece and Rome’ (Milan University, February 7–8, 2017). Many thanks to the speakers as well as to those who joined the project at a later stage. Thanks are also due to the University of Milan for funding the conference back in 2017 and to Durham University for covering the additional expenses associated with the editorial process (pictures and proofreading). Finally, our warm thanks go to the anonymous readers for their encouragement and useful feedback.
Intertextuality is a well-known tool in literary criticism and has been widely applied to ancient literature, with classical scholarship being unusually at the frontline in developing new theoretical approaches.1 By contrast, the twin notion of intervisuality has only recently begun to appear in classical studies, and then only to describe the interaction between word and image in genres, such as comedy and epigram, which are most obviously related to the visual arts.2 While still lacking a consistent definition, intervisuality has proved extremely productive in fields such as visual culture studies, where it is used to describe ‘the simultaneous display and interaction of a variety of modes of visuality’,3 and art history, where it is adopted as a ‘visual counterpart’ to intertextuality, in order to describe the web of allusions, quotes, and reworkings that might link one artwork to another, based on the idea that ‘all art […] takes prior work into account’.4
Through contributions from a diverse team of scholars, this book aims to bring intervisuality into sharper focus and show its potential as a tool to explore the research field traditionally referred to as ‘Greek literature’.
If one were to mention two distinctive phenomena that define Greek civilisation, the choice would easily fall on the symposium and on theatre. While originally imported from the east, in the archaic age the symposium rapidly turned into a hallmark of ‘Greekness’, perceived as such by contemporary civilisations. The symposium is a quintessentially synaesthetic phenomenon, invol
