Ways of describing the past: an analysis of Book II of The Description of Greece by Pausanias.

• Grant number: 24/18511-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Emerson Cerdas
• Grantee: Maria Leticia de Albuquerque Falcão Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The narrative categories of space and time are aspects that have significant importance in all narrative forms, since every story takes place in a certain place and time. In the work The Description of Greece (¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿) by Pausanias, from the 2nd century AD, although it is not a fictional narrative, but a mixture of geography and history, the description of spaces plays a predominant role, since the author sets out to bring to the reader's eyes the geographical space he traversed during his journey. In this endeavor, everything that catches the narrator's eye and that, in his judgment, deserves to be preserved by the literary text is described. Thus, the narrative is filled with details of the physical space, both natural and material culture, in order to offer a panorama of ancient Greece and position it as the true "hero" of the narrative. In this sense, the narrative space converges with the narrative time, since, in the eyes of Pausanias, in the second century AD, we can glimpse various eras of Greece; and it is in this conjunction that, it seems to us, lies the enchantment generated by Greece in the eyes of Pausanias. Thus, this project aims to analyze the techniques of description employed by Pausanias in Book II of his work, especially the descriptions of objects of material culture (temples, monuments, statues, etc.) through studies of literary narratology and the understanding of description in ancient rhetoric.