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8/12/2019 Butler Purves

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Shane Butler and Alex Purves (eds), Synaesthesia and the AncientSenses. Durham: Acumen 2013. Pp. viii + 220 incl. bibliography.

ISBN 978-1-84465-562-5. 17.99 paperback.

Jo DaySchool of Classics, University College Dublin

[email protected]

This edited volume derives from a conference held at

UCLA in 2010 and is the first in the new series published by

Acumen on The Senses in Antiquity. The synaesthesia of the

title should not be confused with the neurological condition

whereby sensory stimuli cross perceptual boundaries, e.g. sounds

having colours. The editors explain, in the Introduction, that the

book is synaesthetic because it embraces all the senses and aims to

move beyond a visual paradigm to explore the rich intersensory

experiences of Classical antiquity. In this aim, they are bringing to

Classical studies an approach pioneered in the 1990s by David

Howes, Constance Classen and Anthony Synnott, collectively

working at Concordia University as CONSERT - the Concordia

Sensoria Research Team. Their explorations of the social and

cultural life of the senses led to numerous ground-breaking

publications1that have influenced diverse fields within humanities,

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For example: David Howes (1991) The Varieties of Sensory Experience(Toronto: University of Toronto Press); David Howes (2003) Sensual Relations:

Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (Ann Arbor: Michigan

University Press); Constance Classen (1993) Worlds of Sense: Exploring the


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from archaeology to film studies. In striking contrast to

archaeology, however, where sensorially-informed methodologies

have brought new insights into thinking about the past and

publications are becoming plentiful,2

previous forays into a

sensory approach to the Classical world have been somewhat

disparate,3and an entire volume on the topic is to be welcomed.

One of the main premises of sensory studies is the extent to

which ocularcentrism has become embedded in the modern world

as the dominant paradigm. This apparent hegemony of vision has

influenced everything from our language (I see what you mean)

to how we learn about the world (through telescopes, microscopes,

computer screens and words). Whether Descartess separation of

the mind from the body, Aristotles hierarchy of senses or early

Christian denial of bodily sensation is to blame (and all have been

Senses in History and Across Cultures(London: Routledge); Constance Classen,David Howes, and Anthony Synnott (1994) Aroma: the Cultural History of

Smell (London: Routledge).2For example: Jo Day (ed.) (2013) Making Senses of the Past: Toward a

Sensory Archaeology (Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations);

Robin Skeates (2010)An Archaeology of the Senses: Prehistoric Malta (Oxford:

Oxford University Press); Yannis Hamilakis (2014) Archaeology and the

Senses: Human Experience, Memory and Affect (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press).3For example: Mark Bradley (2009) Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); David Potter (1999) Odor and

power in the Roman empire In Constructions of the Classical Body, J. Porter(ed.) 169-189, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Classen, Howes and

Synnott (1994), Chaps. 1-2; Charles Feldman (2005) Roman taste. Food,Culture and Society1:8-30. An Open University conference held in London in

November 2013 focused on Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to

Roman Culture, also to be published as a collected volume.


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accused), paying attention to tastes and smells, sounds and touch,

has long been considered unscholarly. How then to explore beyond

the visual in a medium that itself demands to be read? In contrast

to the childrens popularRoman Aromas, with its scratch-and-sniff

patches providing the reader with an olfactory experience of

ancient Rome,4 this volume relies on ancient texts to illustrate its

synaesthetic approach. The thirteen chapters in this volume range

widely from Homer to Quintilian, and flirt with all of the five

senses as recognised in a modern western sensorium (vision,

hearing, touch, taste and olfaction), individually and in a more

multisensory manner.

The volume opens with Porters consideration of the Muses,

or more precisely, why their number varies and why they can be

singular (The Muse) or plural. Taking these personifications of the

arts as a synaesthetic unity, he moves on to show how ancient arts

need to be perceived with more than one sense. For example,

Greek lyric poets like Pindar used synaesthetic language that

blended the sounds of the words, their meanings, and their

kinaesthetic integration into the performance in other words a

sound is being seen. Two case studies illustrate his point, one

with reference to sensory clashes in Seven Against Thebes, the

other examining a skyphos with a nonsense inscription. This latter

4 Mary Dobson (1997) Smelly Old History: Roman Aromas (Oxford: Oxford

University Press).


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is one of the only attempts in the book to engage with things rather

than text, and Porters convincing argument would have been

strengthened by reference to the work of Houston and Taube on

synaesthetic material culture.5

Purves study of haptic Herodotus demonstrates how the

historian called upon the sense of touch to bring him (and his

readers) closer to the truth. This knowing through feeling draws

upon the concept of haptic geographies espoused by Rodaway6and

serves as a valuable check on assumptions that seeing equates

understanding. Purves illustrates his case with well-chosen

examples, such as when Herodotus touches the skulls of dead

Egyptian and Persian soldiers (Histories 3.12) their respective

hardness or softness is indicative (to him) of exposure to the suns

rays, and his classification of races as hard or soft according to the

haptic affects of their dress or the landscape they inhabit. The role

of touch in the stories of Smerdis (3.69) and King Rhampsinitus

(2.121) bookend the chapter. In contrast, sound is the focus of

Paynes contribution, which examines two ancient attempts to

represent animal communication in human language in

Aristophanes Birds and the Cynegetica attributed to Oppian.

Rather than synaesthesia, he focuses on the concept of paraesthesia,

5Stephen Houston and Karl Taube (2000) An archaeology of the senses:

perception and cultural expression in ancient Mesoamerica. CambridgeArchaeological Journal10, 261-294.6Paul Rodaway (1994) Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place. London:

Routledge.


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developed via an introductory section on the wood-birds song in

Wagners Siegfried.

The complementary chapters by Tel and Clements both

deal with Aristophanes and the trangressing of sensory boundaries

within his comedies. Tels chapter takes olfactory conflict as the

theme, demonstrating how the rivalry between Aristophanes and

Cratinus is played out as a clash of odours. Clementss engaging

study of taste-looks (e.g. looked mustard of the Council in the

Knights) draws together a wide range of evidence to explore the

concept of !"#$%. In his inability to pin the word down to an

acceptable translation or even to a single sensory realm, he

emphasises that we must appreciate the existence of

epistemologies other than our own where sensory experiences can

be conceptually conjoined.

Things take a philosophical turn next, as Rosen provides a

meditation on philosophical synaesthesia, and Volk introduces

Maniliuss cosmos of the senses. The tension between aesthetic

experiences and the intellectual contemplation of them is shown to

be at the core of Platos thinking on Beauty. For Manilius, visual

perception is only the first step in understanding a universe that

engages humans through all their senses. For him, the sounds of

the cosmos and the astronomer-poet sing together, and the signs of

the Zodiac see, hear and even touch each other (vision wasunderstood as a tactile phenomenon in antiquity).


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Fully sensing bodies are discussed in Walterss chapter

which explores what death means for our senses according to

Lucretius and Lucan. The mutilation of Gratidianus deprives him

of sensory faculties one by one, leaving his eyes until last; thus

Lucan enables him to witness his fate. For Lucretius, however, the

sense organs will not work when separated from the body;

sensation is only possible when body and soul combine. Walters

then digs deeper to reveal how the sensual aspects of death pervade

the work of both authors.

Bradley has already established his reputation as a scholar

of sensory experiences,7 and here treats the reader to a discussion

of his theory on the object-centered nature of ancient colour

perception. A study of purple draws attention to the olfactory

aspect of this dye extracted from shellfish, and he also ponders the

multisensory experience of ancient spectacle and how this was

conveyed in literature. 8 In contrast, Dozier focuses on visual

metaphors of clarity and obscurity in Quintilian. Good oratory is

synaesthetic in that it enables the audience to see as well as hear,

although a good orator leaves some things shrouded in darkness,

only allowing the audience to see what he wishes them to see. This

theme leads Dozier to some illuminating comments on the

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Bradley 2009.8For a study of the multisensory experience of Roman sacrifice, see Candace

Weddle The sensory experience of blood sacrifice in the Roman imperial cult.

In J. Day (ed.) (2013), 137-159.


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contrasting manipulation of light and obscurity in rhetoric and

poetry.

The final three chapters move beyond ancient texts to their

reception or roles in later works. Keilen delves into Ovids Banquet

of Sence by Chapman (1595) to explore layers of sensuous

encounters with beauty: by the poems protagonist Ovid when he

comes upon Julia bathing; by Chapman as he produces the poem;

and by the reader whose senses are entangled in the experience of

reading. This chapter also contains a useful summary of centuries

of academic scepticism about the senses. Katzs playful

contribution looks at Ferdinand de Saussures interest in anagrams

and more specifically in anaphonie, hidden links in a text between

sound and meaning. Saussure found support for his theory in

works by Homer, Lucretius, and Vergil, for example, but as Katz

points out, these may be accidental occurrences and certainly

Saussure seems to have abruptly stopped this work in 1909 (not

so sure, as ludic Saussurian scholars might put it?). Interestingly,

Katz reveals that Saussure himself appears to have been a

synaesthete, a condition that perhaps enhanced his work with on

the relationship between seeing and hearing by giving colours,

shapes and smells to sounds. The volume closes with Butlers

chapter Beyond Narcissus. This wide-ranging piece dances

between Lacan, Cocteau, Dali, Freud, Picasso, and Ovid, a keysource for the Narcissus myth. Linking all of these together is the


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idea of the mirror, its blurring of the subject/object distinction, and

the dominance of vision over other senses in art and literature. The

presence of these final three chapters in a book on the ancient

senses could be queried, but if the function of a volume like this is

to cross boundaries and inspire different ways of perceiving the

past and thinking about perception in the past, then their inclusion

is indispensable.

As a whole the book is well-edited with only rare errors in

spelling, and includes a unified bibliography at the volumes end

containing a wealth of references to sensory studies. The only

jarring note was the use of in-text references in Keilens chapter in

contrast to the footnotes of every other offering. One might also

have wished for a deeper exploration of the Aristotelian

understanding of the senses touched upon by several of the authors.

The subsequent volumes in the Acumen series each will be

devoted to a single sense of the canonical five and, on the basis of

this offering, are much anticipated. It is hoped, however, that the

editors have plans to include some studies based on material

culture as much as texts; after all, it is through these material

things too that both the ancients and contemporary archaeologists,

museum visitors, and scholars make sense of the Classical world.

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