Beate Pongratz-Leisten

Myth, Text and Image in Ancient Mesopotamia

A Narrative Reading of the World

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book is about the power of story-telling and the place of myth in the cultural memory of ancient Mesopotamia. Rather than reducing mythology to an archaic state of the mind, this study redefines myth as a system of knowledge (episteme) and part of cognitive and cultural experience serving as an explanatory system. It demonstrates how among the multiple ways of world-making (Nelson Goodman) myth not only reflects experiences and reality but also constitutes reality in text and image alike. Drawing on cognitive semiotics, visual studies, and cognitive narratology, it explores the power of the image in showing and revealing something that is absent (deixis). Thus, it demonstrates the contribution of the image to knowledge production. The book calls for re-introducing meaning when dealing with the imagery and iconology of ancient Mesopotamia and introduces an innovative approach to the art history of the ancient Near East.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 350
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. März 2027
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781009629362
• ISBN-10: 1009629360
• Artikelnr.: 75446288

Autorenporträt

Beate Pongratz-Leisten is a cultural historian of the ancient Near East and has published widely on topics of religion, literature, history, royal ideology, materialities of culture, and transmission of cultural memory. Inspired by insights from Cognitive Narratology and Cognitive Semiotics, her book represents a new approach to the relationship between text and image and to the art history of ancient Mesopotamia.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements; List of Figures; Part I. Imagination and the Power of
Story-Telling: What this Book is About; Part II. Explorations of Myth in
Assyriology: Part III. Reviving Myth as Conceptual Metaphor: Mythos as Mode
of Thought; Part IV. Mythic Narrative as a Fundamental Instrument of
Thought: The Explanatory, Orientational, and World-Making Functions of
Myth; Part V. Mythos as Mode of Remembrance and Its Re-actualization in the
Image: Part VI. The Mythos of the Chaoskampf and the Conflict Myths
Informing the Royal Pictorial Repertoire: Part VII. Projecting Myth onto
the Landscape: A Multi-Modal Approach; Part VIII. Marking Myth on the Body:
Part IX. Ekphrasis or the 'Verbal Enactment of the Gaze to Relate with and
Penetrate the Object': Part X. The Agency Behind the Creation Process of
Text and Image: Epilogue.