French Literature Reviews - 2026

C. Calame, Pratiques poétiques de la mémoire
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas

Pratiques poétiques de la mémoire. Représentations de l'espace-temps en Grèce ancienne

Claude Calame,

Paris, La Découverte, 2006

Publisher's blurb:

Reflections on Greek concepts of time have often been framed from a philosophical perspective: circular time, the closure of the mythical world, the division between the sacred and the profane. But what did the Greeks themselves think? They viewed the passage of time within a specific, concrete space where past, present, and future flowed between poetic memory and social practice. Such concepts therefore invite an anthropological approach, especially since the poetic forms assumed by this ritualized collective memory relied, among the Greeks, upon remarkable faculties of symbolic creation bridging narrative and cultic practices. Following a reflection on our contemporary ways of discoursing on the concepts of time and space, Claude Calame examines in turn: Hesiod's poetic narrative on the history of mankind in order to establish justice within the polis; Bacchylides' choral celebration of the Athenian hero Theseus for cultic and ideological purposes; the city of Cyrene's use of its legendary foundational heroic act to reaffirm civic identity; and the poetic texts inscribed on gold tablets to ensure the ritual and initiatory passage of the deceased into a blessed afterlife—Dionysus for the passage, Persephone for eternity.

Spatio-temporal poetics of the past in classical Greece Succession of ages and the poetic pragmatics of justice: Hesiod's narrative of the five human races Gender construction and heroic identity between legend and cult: Bacchylides' political creation of Theseus Regimes of historicity and oracular logics: how to refound a colonial city? Ritual and initiatory pathways to the afterlife: time, space, and pragmatics in the gold tablets

After serving as a professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Lausanne, Claude Calame is a Director of Studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. His notable publications include Thésée et l'imaginaire athénien (Payot, 1996, 2nd ed.), Mythe et histoire dans l'Antiquité grecque (Payot, 1996), Poétique des mythes dans la Grèce antique (Hachette, 2000), Le Récit en Grèce ancienne (Belin, 2000, 2nd ed.), L'Eros dans la Grèce antique (Belin, 2002, 2nd ed.), and Masques d'autorité (Les Belles Lettres, 2005).

In the study of classical antiquity, the intersection of literature, myth, and ritual has long offered a window into how ancient societies organized their collective experience. The surviving poetic corpus from ancient Greece demonstrates how narrative forms actively participated in ritual contexts, political foundations, and religious initiations. Claude Calame examines these dynamics by analyzing specific textual monuments, ranging from Hesiodic epic to choral lyric and inscribed golden lamellae, to understand how poetic language mediated social life.

This volume examines several distinct textual traditions, including Hesiod's account of human races, Bacchylides' choral odes for Theseus, colonial foundation legends in Cyrene, and the eschatological instructions found on gold tablets. Each case study illustrates how poetic memory operated within concrete historical and ritual frameworks, connecting civic identity and religious practice. Readers interested in the anthropology of ancient Greece, myth criticism, or the pragmatics of classical poetic forms may find this study a relevant resource.

Interview with Claude Calame on the vox-poetica website.