Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2021
My subject falls on the frontier between acrostichs and the like, whose nature is entirely to do with words, and indeed in most cases, inevitably, with written words, and the performance culture of the symposium, in which verbal entertainment and communication1 is only one part of a much wider range of performances and interactions – music, dancing, gift-giving, seducing. Much of that wider range falls into what is referred to in Greek as παίζειν, ‘to play’, which has emboldened me to look for my subject in this quarter. What I discuss here also falls within the activities that in English are called ‘teasing’, and for which again the Greek term παίζειν can sometimes be used. That is not to say that the range of meaning of παίζειν is co-extensive with that of the English word ‘tease’, and I am very conscious that my presumptions and interpretations are in danger of being language-specific, because different forms of activity that in English are all referred to by the verb or noun ‘tease’ are distinguished in some languages.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.