Life / Afterlife

Life / Afterlife traces the development, evolution, and uses of underworld scenes in ancient Greek literature and society. Underworld scenes are a unique form of embedded storytelling, appearing across time and genres. These scenes employ a special register of language that acts as a narrative space outside of chronological time and everyday reality. Suzanne Lye shows how writers such as Homer, Hesiod, Aristophanes, Plato, and Lucian, among others, used afterlife depictions as commentaries to communicate a call to action for their audiences in response to cultural, religious, and political changes to their worlds.