Textual Events: Performance and the Lyric in Early Greece

312 Pages·2018·2.063 MB·English

by  Felix Budelmann, Tom Phillips

Title Pages
Textual Events: Performance and the Lyric in
Early Greece
Felix Budelmann and Tom Phillips
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780198805823
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198805823.001.0001
Title Pages
Felix Budelmann, Tom Phillips
(p.i) Textual Events (p.ii)
(p.iii) Textual Events
(p.iv)
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Title Pages
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Preface
Textual Events: Performance and the Lyric in
Early Greece
Felix Budelmann and Tom Phillips
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780198805823
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198805823.001.0001
(p.v) Preface
Felix Budelmann, Tom Phillips
It is a pleasure to record the numerous debts of gratitude we have incurred in
the course of editing this book. Charlotte Loveridge, Tom Perridge, and Georgina
Leighton at OUP provided encouragement and expert advice throughout the
process, Vaishnavi Ananthasubramanyam efficiently oversaw production, Louise
Larchbourne was a meticulous copyeditor and Andrew Hawkey an equally
meticulous proofreader. Joanna Luke compiled the general index. The
anonymous readers greatly improved both the overall design and the detail of
the volume with their suggestions. Magdalen College hosted, and Oxford
University’s John Fell Fund generously funded, the conference in March 2015 at
which earlier versions of many of the chapters were first presented and
discussed.
Unless otherwise indicated, the numeration used for citations is that of the
following editions (see abbreviations list for detail): Voigt for Sappho and
Alcaeus; PMG for ‘melic’ texts other than Alcman, Ibycus, and Stesichorus, for
whom PMGF is used; IEG2 for elegy and iambus; MW for Hesiod.
F.B.
T.R.P.
Oxford
April 2017 (p.vi)
Page 1 of 1
List of Contributors
Textual Events: Performance and the Lyric in
Early Greece
Felix Budelmann and Tom Phillips
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780198805823
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198805823.001.0001
(p.ix) List of Contributors
Felix Budelmann, Tom Phillips
Felix Budelmann
teaches Greek literature at Oxford. He is the author of The Language
of Sophocles (Cambridge, 2000) and editor of the Cambridge
Companion to Greek Lyric (Cambridge, 2009). His commentary on
selections from Greek lyric will appear in 2018.
Giambattista D’Alessio
was Professor of Greek at King’s College London, and is currently
Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Naples, ‘Federico
II’. He has published widely on Hellenistic poetry, Greek lyric poetry,
archaic epic poetry, and on Greek literary papyri.
David Fearn
is Reader in Greek Literature at the University of Warwick. His
published work includes Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic
Tradition (Oxford, 2007), Aegina: Contexts for Choral Lyric Poetry.
Myth, History, and Identity in the Fifth Century BC (ed., Oxford,
2011), and Pindar’s Eyes: Visual and Material Culture in Epinician
Poetry (Oxford, 2017).
G. O. Hutchinson
is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford. He has
written commentaries on Aeschylus’ Septem (1985), Propertius 4
(2006), selected larger pieces of lyric (2001), and books on Hellenistic
poetry (1988), Cicero’s letters (1998), ‘Silver’ Latin literature (1993),
Hellenistic and Roman poetry-books (2008), and the exploitation of
Greek literature by Latin (2013).
Pauline A. LeVen
is Associate Professor of Classics at Yale University. Her main
research interests are in Greek poetry, aesthetics, and musical
Page 1 of 2
List of Contributors
culture; she is currently finishing a monograph devoted to musical
metamorphoses in Greek and Latin myths and working on a series of
articles on sound and ancient conceptualizations of listening.
Mark Payne
is Professor in the Department of Classics and the John U. Nef
Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is the
author of Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction (Cambridge, 2007)
and The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic
Imagination (Chicago, 2010), as well as articles on poetry, poetics,
and ancient ideas of life.
(p.x) Tom Phillips
is Supernumerary Fellow in Classics at Merton College, Oxford. He is
the author of Pindar’s Library: Performance Poetry and Material Texts
(Oxford, 2016). His current research focuses on lyric poetry,
Hellenistic poetry, and ancient scholarship.
Henry Spelman
is the WHD Rouse Junior Research Fellow at Christ’s College,
Cambridge. He is the author of several articles on Greek and Roman
poetry and a monograph entitled Pindar and the Poetics of
Permanence (Oxford, 2018).
Oliver Thomas
is an Assistant Professor in Classics at the University of Nottingham.
He is the author, with David Raeburn, of The Agamemnon of
Aeschylus: A Commentary for Students (Oxford, 2011). He is
currently completing a commentary on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes
for Cambridge University Press.
Anna Uhlig
is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of California,
Davis. She has published on Greek lyric and dramatic poetry of the
archaic and classical period and is completing a comparative study of
Pindar and Aeschylus.
Tim Whitmarsh
is the second A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the
University of Cambridge. He also holds honorary roles at Corpus
Christi College, Oxford, and the Universities of Pretoria and Exeter.
He is the author of seven books, including most recently Battling the
Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (London: Faber and Faber 2016).
Page 2 of 2
List of Abbreviations
Textual Events: Performance and the Lyric in
Early Greece
Felix Budelmann and Tom Phillips
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780198805823
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198805823.001.0001
(p.xi) List of Abbreviations
Felix Budelmann, Tom Phillips
ABV
J. D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford) 1956.
ARV2
J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd edn (Oxford) 1963.
BAdd
T. H. Carpenter, with T. Mannack and M. Mendonça, Beazley
Addenda: Additional References to ABV, ARV2 & Paralipomena, 2nd
edn (Oxford) 1989.
BNJ
Brill’s New Jacoby.
Burstein
S. M. Burstein, Agatharchides of Cnidus: On the Erythraean Sea
(London) 1989.
Campbell
D. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric, Loeb, 5 vols (Cambridge, MA) 1982–93.
CVA
Corpus vasorum antiquorum, 1922–.
D-K
H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th edn, 3
vols (Berlin) 1951–2.
Dr
A. B. Drachmann, Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina, 3 vols (Leipzig)
1903–27.
FGrHist
F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin) 1923–.
Gerber
Page 1 of 3
List of Abbreviations
D. E. Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry from the Seventh to the Fifth
Centuries BC, Loeb (Cambridge, MA) 1999.
GGM
C. F. W. Müller, Geographi graeci minores, 2 vols (Paris) 1855–82.
Giannini
A. Giannini, Paradoxographorum graecorum reliquiae (Milan) 1966.
Henry
R. Henry, Photius: Bibliothèque, 9 vols (Paris) 1959–91.
IEG2
M. L. West, Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, 2 vols, 2nd
edn (Oxford) 1989–92.
K-A
R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae comici graeci, 8 vols (Berlin) 1983–
2010.
LfgrE
B. Snell et al., Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, 4 vols (Göttingen)
1955–2010.
LIMC
H. C. Ackermann et al., Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae
classicae, 18 vols (Zurich) 1981–97.
Littré
E. Littré, Oeuvres complètes d’Hippocrate, 10 vols (Paris) 1839–61,
repr. Hildesheim 1961–82.
(p.xii) LP
E. Lobel and D. L. Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta (Oxford)
1955.
LSJ
H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, revised by H. S. Jones, A Greek–English
Lexicon. 9th edn with supplement edited by E. A. Barber et al.
(Oxford) 1996.
Müller
M. Müller, De Seleuco Homerico, Diss. (Göttingen) 1891.
MW
R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, Fragmenta Hesiodea (Oxford) 1967.
Olson
S. D. Olson, Athenaeus: The Learned Banqueters, Loeb, 8 vols
(Cambridge, MA) 2006–12.
Para.
J. D. Beazley, Paralipomena: Additions to ‘Attic Black-Figure Vase-
Painters’ and to ‘Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters’ (Oxford) 1971.
PMG
D. L. Page, Poetae melici graeci (Oxford) 1962.
PMGF
Page 2 of 3
List of Abbreviations
M. Davies, Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta, vol. 1
(Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus) (Oxford) 1991.
P.Oxy.
Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London) 1898–.
PSI
Papiri greci e latini, Pubblicazioni della Società Italiana per la ricerca
dei papiri greci e latini in Egitto (Florence) 1912–.
Rutherford
I. Rutherford (ed.) Pindar’s Paeans: a Reading of the Fragments with
a Survey of the Genre (Oxford) 2001.
SLG
D. L. Page, Supplementum lyricis Graecis (Oxford) 1974.
S-M
B. Snell and H. Maehler, Pindari carmina cum fragmentis (Lepizig)
1984, 1989.
Sider-Brunschön
D. Sider and C. W. Brunschön, Theophrastus of Eresus: On Weather
Signs, Philosophia Antiqua 104 (Leiden) 2007.
Usener-Radermacher
H. Usener and L. Radermacher, Dionysii Halicarnasei opuscula, 2 vols
(Leipzig) 1899–1929.
Voigt
E.-M. Voigt, Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta (Amsterdam) 1971.
Wehrli
F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles: Texte und Kommentar, 2nd edn,
10 vols (Basel) 1967–9.
West
M. L. West, Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth
Centuries BC, Loeb (Cambridge, MA) 2003.
West
M. L. West, Homeric Hymns; Homeric Apocrypha; Lives of Homer,
Loeb (Cambridge, MA) 2003.
Page 3 of 3
Introduction
Textual Events: Performance and the Lyric in
Early Greece
Felix Budelmann and Tom Phillips
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780198805823
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198805823.001.0001
Introduction
Textual Events: Performance and the Lyric in Early Greece
Felix Budelmann
Tom Phillips
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198805823.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords
After a brief discussion of the anthropological model that has transformed lyric
scholarship in recent decades (highlighting both achievements and areas that
have received little attention), two meanings of ‘Textual Events’ are set out. The
first relates to pragmatics: lyric texts create their own settings, which variously
interact with the actual circumstances of the performance. The second gestures
to the concept of ‘event’ in contemporary philosophy: lyric creates unique
interpretative, sensory, and emotive encounters with each listener and reader. A
case is made for applying the term ‘literary’ to Greek lyric, despite (and because
of) its anachronism. The remainder of the Introduction develops the notion of
context (to encompass intellectual context), discussing continuities and
discontinuities with context in book lyric; sets out ‘lyric moves’ (micro-traditions
within the genre); and discusses aspects of performance not fully captured by
the anthropological paradigm.
Keywords:   Greek lyric, event, performance, genre, context, literature
In the end it is the experience which Sappho brings that matters. The
pleasure to be found in her artistry is surpassed by that to be found in the
emotional and imaginative power of her work, which is the reflection of her
sensitive, suffering, passionate self…Her unfailing senses, her delightful
fancy, her scrupulous sincerity, her passionate strength, even her outbursts
Page 1 of 24
Introduction
of anger or scorn, are the qualities of a character endowed beyond mortal
measure by the Muses and the Graces.
(Bowra 1961: 240, modifying Bowra 1936: 247)
Scholars no longer write like this about Greek lyric. One can easily imagine the
criticism Bowra would incur in today’s seminar room: the apparent naivety of
the biographical assumptions, the framing of Sappho’s character in an
anachronistically modern idiom, and a focus on Sappho as an individual which
seems to marginalize social and performance contexts, would all be obvious
targets. Yet while no one would advocate a wholesale return to such language,
Bowra still offers a compellingly coherent view of Greek lyric, and reflection on
the terms he employs raises intriguing questions about our own ways of
responding to Sappho and other lyric poets. The appeal to ‘pleasure’ as the telos
of reading is beguilingly simple (and recapitulates ancient models of reading),
yet it plays only a minor role in recent criticism. For all its obvious limitations,
the idea of reading as an encounter of (p.2) subjectivities aligns easily and
compellingly with the sense of intimacy with an author that many readers
experience, however difficult it may be for the critic to express this experience
in a satisfactory manner. And easy as it is to dismiss the rhetoric of ‘endowed
beyond mortal measure by the Muses and the Graces’, it might be more
productive to treat the phrase as a prompt (inter alia) to register the numinous
quality of Sappho’s poetry, to consider how Sappho’s ‘character’ emerges
through her language, to engage with the inevitable tension between the frames
of reference we bring to bear on early Greek lyric and those that would have
been available to Sappho and her early audiences. The vague yet suggestive
notion of poetry as a means for conveying ‘experience’ raises interesting
questions about how lyric translates experience into language, what sort of
experiences it gives rise to, and what is involved in crossing the experiential
divide between ancient and modern.
Read sympathetically, therefore, Bowra’s conception of poetry as a vehicle for
‘imaginative power’ and ‘character’ would chime well with what this volume
attempts to do: to explore ways of talking about early Greek lyric that do justice
to what later centuries would call its ‘literary’ qualities (more on this term
below) while also doing justice to the manifold ways in which Greek lyric
interacts with its surroundings. The poems of Greek lyric shape idiomatic
personas, create worlds of the imagination, and draw attention to their status as
highly-wrought verbal artefacts. At the same time, they open out onto the world,
invite interpretation, appeal to their audiences, and refigure the performers’ and
listeners’ understanding of their subject matter. In examining how the two sides
of this dichotomy interact, this volume tries to help us understand more fully
how Greek lyric enriches, explores, intervenes in, and indeed creates, its worlds.
Page 2 of 24