Wonder and the Marvellous from Homer to the Hellenistic World

by Jessica Lightfoot

Wonder and wonders constituted a central theme in ancient Greek culture. In this book, Jessica Lightfoot provides the first full-length examination of its significance from Homer to the Hellenistic period. She demonstrates that wonder was an important term of aesthetic response and occupied a central position in concepts of what philosophy and literature are and do. She also argues that it became a means of expressing the manner in which the realms of the human and the divine interrelate with one another; and that it was central to the articulation of the ways in which the relationships between self and other, near and far, and familiar and unfamiliar were conceived. The book provides a much-needed starting point for re-assessments of the impact of wonder as a literary critical and cultural concept both in antiquity and in later periods. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

272 pages, Paperback

Published September 16, 2021

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Yes, truly, marvels are many …’
—Pindar, Olympian I.28

‘For both Plato and Aristotle, the value and place of wonder (thauma) is clear. Thauma comes first: without wonder, philosophical inquiry would not even begin to get off the ground. As the crucial spark that first stokes and then continually provokes intellectually curiosity, the importance of thauma in both philosophers’ conception of what philosophy is and does should not be underestimated. But it was not in the realm of philosophy alone that wonder occupied a significant conceptual place by the time Plato and Aristotle were writing. As Pindar’s famous, gnomic observation about the inherent multiplicity of marvels cited above suggests, conceptions of and responses to wonder and wonders in antiquity were both multiform and multivalent. In the same spirit, this book does not seek to impose singular, monolithic definitions of what wonder is and what it does in Greek literature and culture but instead endeavors to begin to open up the subject of ancient wonder as a more comprehensive and coherent field of inquiry in the modern world for the first time.’ —Wonder and the Marvellous, Jessica Lightfoot.

This ‘marvellous’ book combines a love of paradoxography with a beautifully crafted understanding of Greek (and Roman) conceptions of and reactions to wonder. It explores the curious capacity of the human mind to look up, outward, and beyond to see interactions between different domains of marvels: divine and mortal, animate and inanimate, natural and manmade. This book’s thematic organization primes the reader to experience by stages the complexity of the ancient mindsets by both familiarizing and necessarily defamiliarizing our own preconceptions of the ancient world. The range of primary material is vast, but never overwhelming, as the thread of wonder brilliantly guides and ties together each unique piece: from Plato and Aristotle to Herodotus and Thucydides, and, of course, as the title suggests, our beloved Homer. Among my favorite chapters, ‘The Sound of Thauma: Music and the Marvellous’, gave special attention to the ever delightful Homeric Hymn to Hermes, opening up many ‘wonder’ful nuances hidden within the hymn.

The book closes as it began, with a return to Pindar’s ‘marvels are many’. And so they are. One of the many delights of this book lies in its capacity to stir that spirit of wonder and inquiry in the reader, posing questions that we may ponder for a long time to come.