Mirrors and Mirroring from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

This volume examines mirrors and mirroring through a series of multidisciplinary essays, especially focusing on the intersection between technological and cultural dynamics of mirrors. The international scholars brought together here explore critical questions around the mirror as artefact and the phenomenon of mirroring.
Beside the common visual registration of an action or inaction, in a two dimensional and reversed form, various types of mirrors often possess special abilities which can produce a distorted picture of reality, serving in this way illusion and falsehood. Part I looks at a selection of theory from ancient writers, demonstrating the concern to explore these same questions in antiquity. Part II considers the role reflections can play in forming ideas of gender and identity. Beyond the everyday, we see in Part III how oracular mirrors and magical mirrors reveal the invisible divine - prosthetics that allow us to look where the eye cannot reach. Finally, Part IV considers mirrors' roles in displaying the visible and invisible in antiquity and since.

Maria Gerolemou is Leventis Research Associate in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of 'Automatic' Theatre in Ancient Greek Drama (Bloomsbury, forthcoming).
Lilia Diamantopoulou is Assistant Professor for Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria.

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Introduction
I. Philosophy, Reflections and Mirrors
1. The Liver and the Mirror: Images Beyond the Eye in Plato's "Timaeus" Ava Shirazi
2. Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Reality of Mirror Images Katerina Ierodiakonou
3. Catoptrology in Lucretius' DRN (4.269-323) Myrto Garani
4. Tideus' Theory of Reflection in On the Mirrors Mikhail Silian
II. [Wo]men in the Mirror
1. Mirrors of Women, Mirrors of Words. The Mirror in the Greek Papyri Isabella Bonati & Nicola Reggiani
2. A flame on Etruscan mirrors? Meaning and function in daily life and religion of the pattern on the mirrors' reflecting side Vittorio Mascelli
3. Portable love: ivory mirror cases under the lens of fin' amor Loreto Casanueva Reyes
4. 'So skillfully mirrored in his art': (re)visiting mirrors in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray Nikolas P. Kakkoufa
III. Liminal Mirror
1. Mirrors and the Manufacture of Religious Aura in the Graeco-Roman world Tatiana Bur
2. The Mirror of Nature Daniel Markovic
3. "The spotless dioptra of prophecy". A mirror metaphor in Byzantine literature Eirini Afentoulidou
4. Mirrors and Mirroring in Dreams: Self-reflection and Liminality in the Roman de la Rose and in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Efthymia Priki
IV. Mimetic Mirror
1. Plane and Curved Mirrors in Classical Antiquity Maria Gerolemou
2. Lucian's lunar mirror (VH 1.26): an ancient telescopic fantasy Karen ni Mheallaigh
3. Mirroring the Face of God: The Challenge of the "Invisible Face" and the Metropolitan Crucifixion Ivory Kalliroe Linardou
4. Technologies ,made in Greece': Konstantinos Simonides' Steampunk Inventions through the Looking-Glass Lilia Diamantopoulou
Notes
Bibliography
Index