Canonisation as Innovation Anchoring Cultural Formation in the First Millennium BCE

• Other Authors: Agut-Labordère, Damien (Editor), Versluys, Miguel John (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Brill 2022
• Subjects: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval; anchoring; Assyria; Attic orators; Babylonia; cultural memory; Egyptian Demotic; embedding; Greek tragedy; Hebrew Bible; innovation; Isis aretalogies; Mnemohistory; Roman religion; The Uncanonical
• Online Access: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

Canonisation is fundamental to the sustainability of cultures. This volume is meant as a (theoretical) exploration of the process, taking Eurasian societies from roughly the first millennium BCE (Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish and Roman) as case studies. It focuses on canonisation as a form of cultural formation, asking why and how canonisation works in this particular way and explaining the importance of the first millennium BCE for these question and vice versa. As a result of this focus, notions like anchoring, cultural memory, embedding and innovation play an important role throughout the book.