Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Role and Social Functions

by Claude Calame, Janice Orion, Derek Collins

In this groundbreaking work, Claude Calame argues that the songs sung by choruses of young girls in ancient Greek poetry are more than literary texts; rather, they functioned as initiatory rituals in Greek cult practices. Using semiotic and anthropologic theory, Calame reconstructs the religious and social institutions surrounding the songs, demonstrating their function in an aesthetic education that permitted the young girls to achieve the stature of womanhood and to be integrated into the adult civic community. This first English edition includes an updated bibliography.

Genres: History

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Claude Calame (born in Lausanne 1943) is a Swiss writer on Greek mythology and the structure of mythic narrative from the perspective of a Hellenist trained in semiotics and ethnology as well as philology. He is a professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Lausanne and Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris.