Book contents
- The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Poetic Tradition
- The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Poetic Tradition
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction Bacchic Verses
- Chapter 1 Mapping Memory
- Chapter 2 The Tomb of Memory
- Chapter 3 Material Genres
- Chapter 4 Gold in the Grave
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
Chapter 2 - The Tomb of Memory
Epigrams and Funerary Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2023
- The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Poetic Tradition
- The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Poetic Tradition
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction Bacchic Verses
- Chapter 1 Mapping Memory
- Chapter 2 The Tomb of Memory
- Chapter 3 Material Genres
- Chapter 4 Gold in the Grave
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
Summary
This chapter compares the gold tablets with funerary epigrams. Though the tablets, unlike epitaphs, were not presented to a public readership, the two genres draw on earlier poetic tradition in surprisingly similar ways and show striking verbal and stylistic parallels. Drawing on the work of Joseph Day and Christos Tsagalis, I argue that the tablets accomplish a “reperformance” of initiation and funerary ritual that is analogous in important respects to that of grave monuments. Like verse epitaphs, the tablets imagine the deceased as part of an exceptional group deserving of recognition. The tablets and funerary epigrams also imagine death as a process of exchange in which the deceased takes on a new identity: the tablets, I argue, use the same expressive devices to affirm the deceased’s new postmortem status and extraordinary afterlife.
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- Information
- The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Poetic TraditionMemory and Performance, pp. 77 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023