ABSTRACT

Unlike the other senses, touch ranges beyond a single sense organ, encompassing not only the skin but also the interior of the body. It mediates almost every aspect of interpersonal relations in antiquity, from the everyday to the erotic, just as it also provides a primary point of contact between the individual and the outside world. The essays in this volume explore the ways in which touch plays a defining role in science, art, philosophy, and medicine, and shapes our understanding of topics ranging from aesthetics and poetics to various religious and ritual practices. Whether we locate the sense of touch on the surface of the skin, within the body or – less tangibly still – within the emotions, the sensory impact of touching raises a broad range of interpretive and phenomenological questions. 

This is the first volume of its kind to explore the sense of touch in antiquity, bringing a variety of disciplinary approaches to bear on the sense that is usually disregarded as the most base and obvious of the five. In these pages, by contrast, we find in touch a complex and fascinating indicator of the body’s relation to object, environment, and self.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

What and where is touch?

chapter 1|13 pages

Hands know the truth

Touch in Euryclea’s recognition of Odysseus

chapter 4|11 pages

The duality of touch

chapter 5|30 pages

Getting to grips with classical art

Rethinking the haptics of Graeco-Roman visual culture

chapter 6|16 pages

In the body of the beholder

Herder’s aesthetics and classical sculpture

chapter 9|17 pages

In touch, in love

Apuleius on the aesthetic impasse of a Platonic Psyche

chapter 10|13 pages

Noli me tangere

The theology of touch

chapter 11|12 pages

Losing touch

Impaired sensation in Greek medical writings