Fellow Project
2025–2026
Between Pathos and Distance Ironic Attitudes Towards Emotion in Ancient Art
Project by
Within her fellow project, Viktoria Räuchle investigates irony as both an aesthetic device and an emotional strategy in Hellenistic visual culture. While Hellenistic art is widely recognized for its emotional intensity and its diverse repertoire of expressive techniques, the phenomenon of ironic distancing—both as a formal device and cultural practice—has received little scholarly attention.
The project seeks to develop a methodological framework for identifying and interpreting ironic elements or modes in ancient visual media. Focusing on representations of death, aging, illness, and desire, it examines how irony interacts with pathos to generate layered emotional responses and narrative complexity.
The Hellenistic period, with its rich interplay between visual art and literature and its heightened interest in affect, offers a particularly fertile context for this inquiry. Rather than functioning merely as a rhetorical ornament, irony emerges as a culturally embedded form of affective communication—one that enables emotional distancing, playful deflection, or subtle critique.
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