COLLOQUIUM: Jim Wright, Bryn Mawr, "From Emblem to Epic: Mycenaean art and Mycenaean Society"

In this lecture I explore how during the Mycenaean era individuals seeking to promote their social and political position manipulated objects and emblems to display their status so as to advance agendas of power over their communities and in relation to other emerging leaders within their spheres.  The paper examines the role of these leaders in external arenas, namely the islands and the palaces of Crete, and how they formalized their personal positions using emblems of their personae and the art of the palaces of Crete to institute a visual program of representation at their centers on the mainland of Greece.  The paper explains how these programs were formalized into programmatic displays within the palaces of mainland Greece during the acme of Mycenaean power. The lecture closes with a consideration of the impact of this visual program in the post-palatial period and discusses how the display of objects and icons is memorialized in acts of display and orality.