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do you really want to live forever?
Feb. 16th, 2008 04:50 pmWoke up at eight o'clock this morning feeling unaccountably bouncy. Ah, sufficient sleep, how I do adore thee! Let me count the ways.
Much of small account was accomplished, which altogether adds up to quite a bit.
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Books 2008: 21
21. Non-fiction. The Greek Way of Death, Robert Garland, New York, 1985.
A discussion of Greek funerary ritual and attitudes towards death from the soi-disant 'time of Homer' down to the fourth century BCE. This is not, perhaps, the most recent book on this topic, and suffers from several flaws.
Garland relies somewhat too much for my comfort on much older works: finding a quote tagged later than the sixties is an oddity, and many of the works cited stand out as coming from the early years of the twentieth century. This is not in itself a bad thing, but coupled with his tendency to imply continuity of practice from the Minoan and Myceneaen periods on into later Greek history, and his emphasis on literary rather than archaeological evidence, makes me disinclined to trust too much to his conclusions. His approach, too, is not infrequently coloured by references to modern and/or Christian attitudes to the dead.
That said, The Greek Way of Death appears to be a reasonable introduction to funerary ritual and iconography in the Greek world of c800-c300 BCE. Weighing in at 120 pages sans endnotes, it goes by relatively quickly, too.
#
Beautiful weather, so we went walking at Malahide Castle. I forgot to bring the camera, alas, so no pictures, but god, was it gorgeous over there. Stuck a nose into the tea-rooms - I'd forgotten how tiny and claustrophobic the halls are on the inside. (It must be eight years or so since I've actually been inside. They didn't have CCTV everywhere back then, either.) Very medieval, apart from the paint scheme and CCTV.
I should shelve books now, and after dinner do writing. I almost remember writing...
Much of small account was accomplished, which altogether adds up to quite a bit.
#
Books 2008: 21
21. Non-fiction. The Greek Way of Death, Robert Garland, New York, 1985.
A discussion of Greek funerary ritual and attitudes towards death from the soi-disant 'time of Homer' down to the fourth century BCE. This is not, perhaps, the most recent book on this topic, and suffers from several flaws.
Garland relies somewhat too much for my comfort on much older works: finding a quote tagged later than the sixties is an oddity, and many of the works cited stand out as coming from the early years of the twentieth century. This is not in itself a bad thing, but coupled with his tendency to imply continuity of practice from the Minoan and Myceneaen periods on into later Greek history, and his emphasis on literary rather than archaeological evidence, makes me disinclined to trust too much to his conclusions. His approach, too, is not infrequently coloured by references to modern and/or Christian attitudes to the dead.
That said, The Greek Way of Death appears to be a reasonable introduction to funerary ritual and iconography in the Greek world of c800-c300 BCE. Weighing in at 120 pages sans endnotes, it goes by relatively quickly, too.
#
Beautiful weather, so we went walking at Malahide Castle. I forgot to bring the camera, alas, so no pictures, but god, was it gorgeous over there. Stuck a nose into the tea-rooms - I'd forgotten how tiny and claustrophobic the halls are on the inside. (It must be eight years or so since I've actually been inside. They didn't have CCTV everywhere back then, either.) Very medieval, apart from the paint scheme and CCTV.
I should shelve books now, and after dinner do writing. I almost remember writing...
