Textualization of Experience
Studies on Ancient Greek Literature
Published on 26. October 2020
Book
Hardback
238 pages
978-3-631-83282-0 (ISBN)
Description
The book is an analysis of Greek Hellenistic literature with the help of conceptual tools of cultural studies and media theory. Its main aim is to describe the cultural process during which Greek authors in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. made the "textualization of experience", that is, transferred phenomenalistically understood qualities of human sensory experience to the categories characteristic for textual description - as far as possible for them. This process is shown by examples from the works of Xenophon, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Philitas of Kos and Archimedes. The author also tries to show some of the consequences that the phenomenon of the Hellenistic textualization of experience had for the later epochs of European culture.
More details
Person
Pawel Majewski, professor at the University of Warsaw. His books concern the influence of means of communication on the formation of cultural systems (Writing, Text, Literature, Warsaw 2013; The Speaking Lion, Warsaw 2018; The Feast of the Language, Warsaw 2019) and the works of Stanislaw Lem (Between an Animal and a Machine. Technological Utopia of Stanislaw Lem, Peter Lang 2018).
Content
A synthetic description of the processes that led to the creation of a "textual picture of the world". The author proves that "text culture" in European science and literature does not result from universal relations between language, world and experience, but is the result of cultural processes.