Images of Shortages and Abundance
Subproject:
C 02 Images of Shortages and Abundance: Resources and their Literary Construction in the Context of the Greek Colonization‘
Project leadership:
Prof. Dr. Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Stanzel, Prof. Dr. Mischa Meier
Staff:
Vincent Clausing-Lage, Dominik Delp, Xenja Herren
Region:
Greece, Mediterranean area
How did the ‘Ancient Greeks’ see agriculture and society? How did they experience the migratory movements in the course of the ‘great Greek colonization’?
Using the archaic poem Works and Days by Hesiod, which contains specific work instructions for farmers, and the reception of Hesiod, especially in the Phainomena of Arat, the subproject examines the literary presentation, classification and evaluation of agricultural and social resources in different spaces and periods of Greek history. The focus is on the analysis of the literary processing of life-worldly experiences in the historical context of the so-called ‘great Greek colonization’ of the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. and of early Hellenism (3rd century B.C.). In addition to agriculture, central topics are astronomy, sea travel and the mythical narrative tradition, together with the mythical presentation of resources and the depiction of mobility and migration.