Narrative and Event in Ancient Art

Peter Holliday assembles new readings of several of the major monuments of antiquity, including the Pergamon Altar, the Apollo Belvedere, and the François Tomb, in the context of narrative representation. Focusing on an individual monument, each of the essays provides a model for construing ancient narrative structures through the application of methodological approaches relevant to the problems embedded in the distinctive objects produced by diverse societies. These essays also address the interplay between text and linguistic structure, style as a narrative force, time as a narrative clue, narrative through emblematic versus sequential images, and the observer as a necessary activator of the narrative. The essays demonstrate that visual images have an infinite capacity for verbal extension, forcing the viewer to take an active and creative role in a dialogue with an art work and to become, essentially, both critic and narrator in order to reinvent the experience it communicates.

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Product details

• Date Published: February 1994
• format: Hardback
• isbn: 9780521430135
• length: 386 pages

• dimensions: 263 x 184 x 30 mm
• weight: 1.05kg
• contains: 95 b/w illus.
• availability: Unavailable - out of print April 2004