Hesiod's Body Sublime: Metabolic Aesthetics in the Hesiodic Corpus

The archaic Greek poet, Hesiod, gives us bodies. Godly bodies that consume other gods. Mortal bodies that digest godly gifts. Bodies that amaze, disgust, and turn breath into poetry. This talk interrogates the bodies of the Hesiodic corpus especially for their metabolic capacities and how metabolism defines political and poetic success.

Speaker Bio: Stephen A. Sansom is an assistant professor in the Department of Classics at Florida State University. His research investigates Greek epic poetry from literary, computational and comparativist perspectives. His first monograph project, The Hesiodic Shield of Heracles and the Aesthetics of Olympus (under review) situates the Shield of Heracles in the politicized aesthetics of Hesiod’s cosmos. His second book project, Patterns of Expectancy in Greek Epic, uses data science and close reading to explore the meanings generated by the metrical position of words over the thousand-year history of Greek hexameter poetry. His work has been supported by fellowships from the N.E.H., Harvard University’s C.H.S. (Washington, D.C.), and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of the new FSU Humanities Center, which seeks to promote and advance the humanities through fellowships, conferences, and conversation.

Hosted by: Center for Hellenic Studies Program