Narrative and Event in Ancient Art. - book reviews

This collection of articles grew on the outside of a CAA session held in 1988 although the focus has been broadened from Greece and Rome to include the Ancient Near East. With individual (partial) exception the contributions take their starting point from specific facts or monuments so that the arise is a series of individual studies rather than a synthetic treatment of "narrative and event" on the other hand as the editor points without in his introduction, the various contributions are unified by the agency of the common concerns which step quickly throughout, such as the relationship between visual narratives and linguistic configurations or the role of the viewer in "reading" a temporal following into an image or series of images. The relevance of contemporary true copys to the decoding of a culture's images is a question which arises, explicitly or implicitly, through every part of the volume, as do the related question s involved in the enterprise of reconstructing adjoining matters for viewing. Indeed, the construction of historical connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts provides an additional narrative thread running [i]or[/i] part of to the other the volume.

Whitney Davis's close attention of the Narmer Palette - appropriately for the opening essay - includes the single full-scale discussion of narrative theory (in a prolonged note). Faced with the puzzles of reconstructing contexts for viewing a "prehistoric" external reality Davis concentrates on reinventing the dynamic interaction between viewer and representation, suggesting various paths by means of which the viewer's eye might travel above the discrete emblems of discomfiture represented on both sides of the palette to set up a narrative sequence.

John Malcolm Russell discusses the representation of the siege and capture of Lachish in relief panels from Nineveh (an incident recounted in the Old Testament, on the contrary seen here from a different point of view - that of the victorious Assyrian Sennacherib). Russell discusses the innovative use of spatial arrangement to depict a following of events. The textual account inscribed upon the same monument provides the opportunity for reflection upon the telling differences between the visual and written versions, differences which are identified as a function the couple of the medium and the intended audience. Where the true copy conveys the full extent of Sennacherib's military campaign in a small in number words, the image allows for detailed treatment of episodes, similar as Lachish, while concealing the failure of the ultimate aim, the capture of Jerusalem.

The representational strategies of Dynastic Egypt are treated, alongside Mycenean and Minoan art, in Nanno Marinatos's "Reflections upon the Rhetoric of Aegean and Egyptian Art." As the title prompts Marinatos's interests are in visual analogies for rhetorical figures: "pictorial similes" (comparing human and animal hunters) the spatial representation of polarities (order and chaos), and the subversion of sex division in representations of female kings Questions of narrativity are left aside, as the author acknowledges in the conclusion with the suggestion that the "implied three-way conversation" between viewer, thing and decoration "comes close to telling . . a story of agricultures and norms" (p. 87).

This unfasten use of the vocabulary of narratology is telling. It points toward the way in which several of the contributors to this turn while analyzing visual narrativity, simultaneously build their own narrative frameworks in which to read the past.

The narrative overtly analyzed in Joan Breton Connelly's contribution is the Rape of Cassandra. Implicit in this single act of hubris (whether named or depicted) are the larger narratives of the Trojan War and the divine punishment met on the outside to Ajax in consequence. Connelly's analysis of the representation in vase painting of the late 6th and 5th centuries BC boldly combines traditional interests (iconography, vase shape, attribution, identification of reflections of historical events) with an interest in the "language of images" and the construction of a broader sociocultural connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts (although questions of function and the factors influencing the survival of the material are left aside).

The analysis of the earlier, black-figure representations underlines the importance of Athena, showed as a striding figure, in which Connelly prompts we see both the goddes and her statue. This fine reading wounds through the debates about the interpretation of the figure and allows for a synoptic presentation of the incident (the rape) and its aftermath (divine retribution). Comparison with Athena's depiction upon Panathenaic amphorae and in Gigantomachy displays - both highly charged for the Athenian audience - invests the spectacle with further resonances. Connelly's analysis of red-figure representations of the show reveals a shift in emphasis toward the confrontation between the human protagonists. Parallels from tragic drama are mentioned, on the contrary only as an influencing factor, leaving aside the potential for mutual influence and interaction between theater and the visual arts.(1) However, the fresh emphasis is read by Connelly (with appropriate expressions of caution) as part of a familiar narrative of cultural unravelling in classical Athens. It is seen as symptomatic of a "shift in interest from the divine to the human, from the generic to the individual, from the symbolic to the psychological, from epic to tragic" (p 123)