Seized by the Nymphs: Nympholepsy and Symbolic Expression in Classical Greece

Connor, W. Robert

doi:10.2307/25010886

Cited by 29 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…5.66 and Ar. Aves 1534; also shrines built by nympholepts offer further examples (see Connor 1988). These unregulated examples may have been the focus of worship by individuals and/or small groups, if only families.…”

Section: Religious Misdemeanoursmentioning

confidence: 99%

Envy, Poison, and Death

Eidinow

2015

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At the heart of this volume are three trials held in Athens in the fourth century BCE. The defendants were all women and in each case the charges involved a combination of ritual activities. Two were condemned to death. Because of the brevity of the ancient sources, and their lack of agreement, the precise charges are unclear, and the reasons for taking these women to court remain mysterious.Envy, Poison, and Death takes the complexity and confusion of the evidence not as a riddle to be solved, but as revealing multiple social dynamics. It explores the changing factors-material, ideological, and psychological-that may have provoked these events. It focuses in particular on the dual role of envy (phthonos) and gossip as processes by which communities identified people and activities that were dangerous, and examines how and why those local, even individual, dynamics may have come to shape official civic decisions during a time of perceived hardship.At first sight so puzzling, these trials reveal a vivid picture of the socio-political environment of Athens during the early-mid fourth century BCE, including responses to changes in women's status and behaviour, and attitudes to ritual activities within the city. The volume reveals some of the characters, events, and even emotions that would help to shape an emergent concept of magic: it suggests that the boundary of acceptable behaviour was shifting, not only within the legal arena but also through the active involvement of society beyond the courts.

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Section: Religious Misdemeanoursmentioning

confidence: 99%

Envy, Poison, and Death

Eidinow

2015

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“…349 On this nympholeptos and his activities: Himmelmann-Wildschütz 1957; Van Straten 1976, 19 and nn. 264-268;Pleket 1981, 162 f.;Connor 1988. Most recent treatment: Purvis 2003 Connor 1988, 162 f. Texts and discussion also in Purvis 2003, 17 f., with n. 23. We cannot be sure about the 'tree' and the 'daphne'.…”

Section: Ducking Out: Gods In Personal Religiositymentioning

confidence: 99%

Coping With the Gods

Versnel¹

2011

335

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Books and articles for which I use the name-date system are given in the bibliography. Works that are cited by abbreviated title only are given here. The abbreviations of periodical titles follow the conventions of l'Année philologique. Corpora of inscriptions are referred to as (e.g.) I.Priene, according to the conventions of SEG, or form part of the series Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien (1972-).

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“…Nabokov first coined the term "nymphet" in 1955 in his novel Lolita, while the description of "nympholepsy" or the belief that certain individuals were "seized by the nymphs" in Greek literary texts has existed for a very long time. Dodd insists that many works by Euripides, Plato, and other classical authors cannot properly be understood without attention to these phenomena and to the role of the seemingly irrational has proved highly productive [3]. Within literary writers, such as William Faulkner, in his work, he avoids specifying the details of a nymph, it can only be written off as a dream or a figment of the protagonist's imagination [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tragedy of Nymphic Desire in Lolita

2022

FAR

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In Nabokov's novel Lolita, words such as nymphet, nymphancy, nympholepsy and nymphic appear more than hundred times. They are all derive from the alluring, entrancing and bewitching deities in Ancient Greek: nymphs. In this novel, Lolita is often being described as nymphet by Humbert, but in American society at that time, she is just a typically modern American girl with beauty and energy, while not the nymphet in Humbert's own mind. That's to say, the image of the nymphet is actually the desire of Humbert himself toward other young girls. The desire, which intentionally covered by his twice marriages with Valeria and Charlotte, appears after his loss of his lover, Annabel, in childhood. Humbert tries to materialize his image of a nymphet to the real girl Lolita, and hopes to control her, but he failed, it is actually the freaky desire of a nymphet which finally destroyed him.

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Seized by the Nymphs: Nympholepsy and Symbolic Expression in Classical Greece

Cited by 29 publications

References 10 publications

Envy, Poison, and Death

Envy, Poison, and Death

Coping With the Gods

Tragedy of Nymphic Desire in Lolita

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