The Muses
19 May, 2016
800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Muses and their role in Greek mythology, when they were goddesses of poetry, song, music and dance: what the Greeks called mousike, ‘the art of the Muses’ from which we derive our word ‘music.’ While the number of Muses, their origin and their roles varied in different accounts and at different times, they were consistently linked with the nature of artistic inspiration. This raised a question for philosophers then and since: was a creative person an empty vessel into which the Muses poured their gifts, at their will, or could that person do something to make inspiration flow?
Guests
- Paul Cartledge
20 episodes
Emeritus Professor of Greek Culture and AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge - Angie Hobbs
24 episodes
Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy, University of Sheffield -
Penelope Murray No other episodes
Founder member and retired Senior Lecturer, Department of Classics, University of Warwick
Reading list
-
The Muses and their Afterlife in Post-Classical Europe
Kathleen Christian, Clare Guest and Claudia Wedepohl (eds.) (Warburg Institute, 2014) Google Books → -
A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics
Pierre Destree and Penelope Murray (eds.) (Wiley Blackwell, 2015) -
Theogony
Hesiod (trans. M. L. West) (Penguin Classics, 2000) Google Books → -
Music and the Muses: The Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City
Penelope Murray and Peter Wilson (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2004) Google Books → -
Iliad
Homer (trans. E. V. Rieu) (Penguin Classics, 2014) Google Books → -
Odyssey
Homer (trans. E. V. Rieu) (Penguin Classics, 2009) Google Books → -
Early Socratic Dialogues
Plato (trans. Chris Emlyn-Jones and Trevor Saunders) (Penguin Classics, 2005) Google Books → -
Phaedrus
Plato (trans. C. J. Rowe) (Penguin Classics, 2005) Google Books → -
Laws
Plato (trans. Trevor Saunders) (Penguin Classics, 2005) Google Books → -
Cultivating the Muse: Struggles for Power and Inspiration in Classical Literature
Efrossini Spentzou and Don Fowler (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2002)
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Programme ID: b07bft7v
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bft7v
Auto-category: 800 (Literature and rhetoric)