
The word 'archaic' derives from the Greek arkhaios, which in turn is related to the word archē, meaning 'principle', 'origin', or 'cause'; the notion of ecstasy, or ekstasis, implies standing outside or beyond oneself, a self-transcendence...

How these two concepts - the ecstatic and the archaic - are articulated and co-implicated constitutes the core question underlying this edited collection, which examines both the present day and antiquity in order to trace the insistent presence of the ecstatic amid the archaic...