Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World XII

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NIALL SLATER

Emory University

 

 

"Modified rapture!" In and Out of Orality in Staging Comedy

 

The texts that flow on to us from the Library of Alexandria assumed a new textuality for consumption by a now Mediterranean-wide public for the inheritance of Greek literature. Tragedy had already undergone earlier stages of textualization, both through the circulation of such reading copies as are attested in Aristophanes' Frogs and the creation of a state mechanism for supervision of performances of old tragedies in the age of Lycurgus (even if details of the mechanism are disputed). Comedy presumably had a reading public as well, though none of its texts were ever canonized for state performance, and still detectable variations in the texts that reached Alexandria attest to a more fluid and divisible notion of comic performance. Analogies from the practices of early modern drama, though inherently speculative, may help us to rethink the notion of fixity of text we still find implicit in the singularity of performance at the main Athenian festivals.

            The disputed details of Aristophanes' early career offer important clues for rethinking how a comic performance at the Dionysia came into being. Accusations of unacknowledged assistance and what we would now term plagiarism suggest a world of emulative competition in which authorship, insofar as it exists, stakes its claim through performance rather than writing, and a performance in which improvisatory elements are not in tension with ritual occasion. Aristophanes’ denigration of Cratinus as passé inadvertently attests to a significant culture of oral reperformance of Cratinus's odes and thus presumably of other Old Comedy elements as well (note the claim that Frogs was granted a full reperformance because of its parabasis). Evidence for missing elements of performance, such as χοροῦ in our manuscripts, should be re-examined as evidence for variability of instantiation on stage rather than failure of textual transmission. Time permitting, we can even examine changing prologue technique in the age of New Comedy for a still vital orality in actual performance.

 

 

 

CLAAS LATTMANN

Kiel University

 

Between Athens and Delphi.

The Performance and Poetics of the Delphic Hymns

 

In 128/7 BCE an Athenian theoria to Delphi performed two hymns. These songs were inscribed on the Athenian treasury and found in the 19th century. Though the inscription informs us about the genre and thus performance situation, this information is rather confusing. Each poem is assigned to two genres, i.e. “paian and hyporchema” and “paian and prosodion.” This is com- monly interpreted as implying that each poem was in fact two poems.

      This paper proposes a new explanation of the surprising situation, with a significant bearing for our understanding of the manner of how mythical stories were told and structured in Greek poetry with its essentially oral and public character. This new reading starts from the observation that although both hymns are, not the least as prayers addressed to Apollo, strikingly similar, they differ with regard to the fact that the “paian and hyporchema” contains a description of a mythical sacrifice and the “paian and prosodion” a narration of Apollo’s voyage from Delos.

            This leads to the proposal that both songs were songs for Apollo (“paian”), with one of them being a stationary song (“hyporchema”) and the other a processional song (“prosodion”) – and that these specific modes of performance were directly mirrored in the mythical passages. The specific manner of narrating the, on the whole, same myths therefore allowed to give meaning to the cultic actions that were being performed by interpreting them as re-enactments of archetypal mythical acts.

 

 

 

SANDRA FLEURY

University of Montreal and EPHE Paris

 

 

Writing the Unspeakable:

How Did the Greeks Write About the Mysteries

 

Addressing the issue of orality (performance) and literacy raises questions regarding the way Greek authors wrote about ‘unspeakable’ things, as was for example the experience of the Eleusinian mysteries. The problem is all the more complex and interesting if we consider that Greek authors had different ideas, wrote for different purposes and for different publics. In this regard, I propose to investigate how mysteries are evoked in writings depending on the different genres littéraires, be it tragedy, comedy, philosophy or poetry, by observing the terminology used in each case, and the ritual actions that seem to be predominantly alluded to in a specific genre. For example, while Plato and other thinkers often highlight the initiatory levels (myesis and epopteia), praising the perfect state of the epoptes (e.g. Plato, Phaedrus, 250b-c), those aspects do not clearly appear in tragedy or comedy, where the focus is put less on the individual experience of the revelation than on the joyful ritual actions executed in common (procession, dancing, singing, throwing of torches…). Furthermore, if the author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter allegorizes the aischrologia ritual in using the figure of Iambe (200-205), Aristophanes stays on a more ‘realistic’ level and simply uses words – in an iambic meter – that refer explicitly to the action of mocking (Frogs, 375-376). Therefore, such a study would permit to identify the elements of the Eleusinian ritual which seemed important to point out according to the target audience and, in doing so, to grasp what in the ‘mystic’ experience appears to have been most meaningful or memorable for a Greek depending on his social status (intellectual, ‘average’), in accordance with the theory of the ‘Great’ versus the ‘Little Traditions’[1].

 

 

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MATHILDE CAMBRON-GOULET

University of Québec

 

Chreia in Context

 

As the literary genre chosen by authors often depend on the enunciation context, on the audience, and on the purposes towards which they aim, we now know that in Antiquity dialogues or letters were widely used in philosophical texts as means to imitate oral practices, which also emphasized the nature of philosophy as a way of life. Chreia, however, although they were used to tell stories and anecdotes about philosophers without losing the wit and humour that were the essence of their oral speeches, and were at first preserved by the oral tradition (Kindstrand 1986:230), have not yet received a lot of attention from orality and literacy specialists as a literary genre in its own right.

       Through a case study of the Book VI of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives about the Cynics, this paper seeks to examine how chreia are structured and told to serve different purposes (e.g. education, entertainment, edification) for different audiences (Kindstrand 1986:233). In particular, I study the different contexts in which chreia are used: in Diogenes Laertius’ prose; in the works cited by Diogenes Laertius (Athenaeus’ epigram, VI 14; Cercidas’ Meliambi, VI 76-77; Menander’s Hippokomos, VI 83; Menander’s Didymai, VI 93, etc.) and in Diogenes Laertius’ epigrams (VI 19; VI 79; VI 100). These different purposes influence the type of chreia (gnomai, apophthegmata, apomnemoneumata) used, as well as the different contexts of enunciation influence the structure of the chreia (e.g. funerary epigrams usually call for a shorter text).

      The use Diogenes Laertius makes of chreia in his prose suggests a strong will to emphasize the legitimacy of cynicism as an hairesis – a philosophical school that implies an adhesion to a particular way of life and to a given set of doctrines – that is consistent with the argument of the prologue (I 18-19). Witty speeches and a good sense of repartee, that is, oral features, are then as important as doctrine to define one’s identity as a philosopher, and in that respect are essential traits of a philosopher’s biography, while they don’t play the same role in epigrams or in comedy where the identity of the philosopher is not questioned.

 

[1] A theory brilliantly recalled by H.S. Versnel in A different god?, R. Schlesier (ed.), 2011.

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Works cited:

 

Brancacci, A., 1992. “I κοινῇ ἀρέσκοντα dei Cinici e la κοινωνία tra cinismo e stoicism nel libro VI (103-105) delle ‘Vite’ di Diogene Laerzio.” ANRW II.36.6, p. 4049-4075.

 

Hock, R. F., and O’Neil, E. N., 1986. The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, Volume 1: The Progymnasmata, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

 

Hock, R. F., and O’Neil, E. N., 2002. The Chreia and Ancient Rhetoric: Classroom Exercises. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

 

Hock, R. F., 2012. The Chreia and Ancient Rhetoric. Commentaries on Aphthonius’s Progymnasmata. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

 

Kindstrand, J. F., 1986. “Diogenes Laertius and the « Chreia » Tradition”, Elenchos 7, p.217-243.

 

M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, 1992. “Le livre VI de Diogène Laërce: analyse de sa structure et réflexions méthodologiques.” ANRW II.36.6, p.3880-4048.

 

M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, 1993. “Le cynisme est-il une philosophie?” in Monique Dixsaut, éd., Contre Platon, t.I: Le platonisme dévoilé, Paris: Vrin.

 

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FIONA SWEET FORMIATTI

Australian National University

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The Transformation of Ransom Into ξένιον:

the Talking Therapy of Priam and Akhilleus (Il. 24)

 

In this paper I explore how ritual and narrative transform an interaction between enemies,  suppliant and supplicandus, about ransom, into one between honoured guest and host. Naiden (2006, 119–120) argues that supplication aimed at ransom is an economic transaction; it does not lead to any bond such as that of ξένια (hospitality). I argue that, in the instantiation that we find in Iliad 24 of the supplication type-scene, that part of the ransom (ἄποινα, 139) which Akhilleus leaves untouched is transformed into a gift of hospitality (ξένιον) that the hero will ‘present’ to Priam. Simon (1980, 75–76) observes that the use of narrative in this interaction between Priam and Akhilleus illustrates ‘story as part of therapy’, which is facilitated by ‘simultaneous identifications’ of both men as ‘destroyer and destroyed’, and parent and child. Although it is the therapy of talk that transforms the relationship between the two men, it is the ξένιον that effects – and crowns – this transformation and gives it meaning.

 

 

Works cited :

 

Naiden, F. S. Ancient Supplication (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

 

Simon, Bennett. Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece: The Classical Roots of Modern Psychiatry, 2nd ed., (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980).

 

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ANNA LEFTERATOU

Universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg

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Eudocia Homeric Centos in Literary and Ritual Context

 

This paper will discuss Eudocia’s Homeric Centos (HC) lines 497 – 461 (Schembra) that describe Jesus’ baptism. In it, I will show how late antique readers were a well- trained audience, who were prompted to decipher the Christian epic poem by recalling a variety of intertexts oral, ritual, and literary. The selected passage will present cases where the audience is encouraged to decipher:

Aural intratexts:


1. Centos used as formulas in a new context: for example, HC, 469, (αἴγλη δ’οὐρανὸν ἷκε, γέλασσε δὲ πᾶσα περὶ χθών), is used consistently in the Homeric Centos for various cases of divine epiphany (cf. Agosti1, Karanika).

Textual intertexts:

1. Centos that support Christian exegesis, such as, for example, the similarities in the 
description of the river Scamander and Jordan or the washing of Sarpedon’s body 
and Jesus’ baptism in the respective rivers’ waters.

2. Centos translated into Biblical passages, such as for example Il. 21. 382, (ἄψορρον δ ̓ ἄρα κῦμα κατέσσυτο καλὰ ῥέεθρα) that are detached from the Homeric textual situation and translated into a passage echoing the Crossing of the Red Sea from Palms 114:3, ἡ θάλασσα εἶδε καὶ ἔφυγεν, ὁ Ἰορδάνης ἐστράφη εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω, (cf. Hall).

Ritual intertexts:


1. Centos associated with ritual contexts, such as the mention of Jesus’ white gown, are nowhere in the Gospels. It appears that the text here alludes to an element known from contemporary baptismal practices and is probably supported by apocryphal literature aswell (see Daniélou, Agosti2).

Visual intertexts:


1. Visual culture that points to the rich iconography of Jesus’ baptism (cf. Strzygowski).

The aim of the paper is to illustrate the late antique complex deciphering techniques of an epic poem that was orally performed but which simultaneously alluded to a well established written culture, Homeric and Biblical.

 

Works cited :

 

Agosti1, G. (2012), “Greek Poetry”, in S. F. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, Oxford, OUP, p. 361-404.


 

Agosti2, G. (2012), “Versificare i riti pagani: per uno studio del catalogo delle iniziazioni nel San Cipriano di Eudocia”, Il calamo della memoria, 5, p. 199-220.

 

Daniélou, J. (1961), Les symboles chrétiens primitifs, Paris, du Seuil.


 

Hall T. N. (1990), “The reversal of the Jordan”, Traditio, 45, p. 53-86.

 

Karanika, A. (2011), “Homer the prophet. Homeric verses and divination in the Homeromanteion”, in A. P. M. H. Lardinois, J. H. Block, and M. G. M. van der Proel (eds.), Sacred Words: orality, literacy, and religion, Leiden, Brill, p. 255-78.


 

Strzygowski, J. (1885), Ikonographie der Taufe Christi, ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der christlichen Kunst, München, Theodor Riedel.

 

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JAMES O'MALEY

Melbourne Trinity College

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The Underworld as Narrative Space in Greek Oral Epic

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Ritual aspects of Underworld journeys in Greek literature have long been a focus of attention in Classical scholarship. Less well studied, however, are the ways in which such journeys function as narrative, and the importance of the Underworld as a narrative, even an intertextual, space in Greek poetics, deserves further scrutiny. Underworld journeys, by their very nature, afford opportunities for engagement with figures from several different mythological traditions, and provide a locus for meetings between characters who are otherwise separated by time, space, and even narrative genre. This in turn allows storytellers to tell several different mythological stories, and even allow for the introduction of multiple voices to narrate their own stories, all within a single setting.

       This paper will examine the use of the Underworld as a narrative space in archaic Greek epic poetry, and show the different ways in which oral poets utilise the poetic potential of this space. Particular focus will be on the two Odyssean Underworld scenes, in Books 11 and 24, but reference will also be made to the fragmentary account of Herakles’ katabasis in Panyassis’ Herakleia, and to the epic account of the Underworld meeting between Theseus and Meleagros preserved in the Ibscher papyrus. These three different epic treatments each present the Underworld not simply as a ritual space, but also as a narrative space, in which different myths and different narratives can coexist and interact in poetically fruitful ways.

 

 

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JONATHAN READY

Indiana University

 

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Oral Texts and Entextualization in Homeric Epic

 

The Iliad contains Homeric epic’s one reference to writing: Bellerophon carries a folded tablet (pinaki) on which Proetus has scratched (graphas) “baneful signs” (sēmata lugra) (Il. 6.168-9). Despite this omission or occlusion of written texts, the world depicted in the epics does not lack texts or a concept of textuality. Rather, we encounter an abundance of texts in the poems’ storyworlds if we follow the lead of linguistic anthropologists who investigate “the constitution of oral texts” (Barber 2007: 67) through processes of entextualization. My paper investigates the Homeric poems’ representation of oral texts and entextualization. In this way, I propose to address one of the conference’s fundamental themes: the relationship between what an oral performer generates in performance and what a literate writer generates while sitting at his desk. I stress an essential similarity between the two figures: both produce texts.

      In Part I, I review the linguistic anthropologist’s model of entextualization. Entextualization is “the process of rendering a given instance of discourse a text, detachable from its local context” (Urban 1996: 21). Strategies of entextualization include the following. First, formal devices, such as parallelism (e.g., Bauman 2004: 121), impart textuality to an oral utterance. Second, casting a verbal act as a quotation positions it as a text: quotation “foreground[s] the perception that these words pre-existed their present moment of utterance and could also continue to exist after it” (Barber 2005: 268). Third, evaluating, commenting on, or explicating what one has heard or told “reinforces its consolidation as text” (Barber 2005: 272). Fourth, non-discursive modes, such as the use of melody or gestures, make speech memorable and therefore help to entextualize it (Wilce 2009: 35-40).

        In Part II, I apply these findings to the Homeric poems. The most explicit flagging of the production of an oral text, an utterance intended to outlast the moment, comes when one character tells another to pass along what he says to a third party. Two such speeches by Zeus can exemplify the use of formal devices to knit together a textual package. I next explore how the characters entextualize an utterance by quoting it and how by attaching texts to objects they reify their textuality. I then trace how the characters interact with oral stories in ways that enhance their status as texts: they make the story an object of reflection and attention. Lastly, I look for indications of non-discursive entextualization in Homeric epic by turning to the spoken laments of the Iliad.

       I conclude by suggesting that the constitution of oral texts in the world depicted in the Homeric poems points toward the poet’s own desire to entextualize. Discussion of Homeric oral textuality cannot be limited to the idea that the Homeric poems gradually achieved fixity without the use of written texts (e.g., Nagy 1996: 69; Currie 2006: 2; Barker and Christensen 2014: 251). Rather, each time the Homeric performer performed, he crafted an oral text by using the mechanisms of entextualization.

 

Works Cited :

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Barber, K. 2005. “Text and Performance in Africa.” Oral Tradition 20: 264-77.

–––––. 2007. The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics: Oral and Written Culture in Africa and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2014. “Even Heracles Had to Die: Homeric ‘Heroism’, Mortality and the Epic Tradition.” Trends in Classics 6: 249-77.

Bauman, R. 2004. A World of Others’ Words: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Currie, B. 2006. “Homer and the Early Epic Tradition.” In Clarke, M. J., Currie, B. G. F., and Lyne, R. O. A. M. eds. Epic Interactions: Perspectives on Homer, Virgil, and the Epic Tradition Presented to Jasper Griffin by Former Pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nagy, G. 1996. Homeric Questions. Austin: University of Texas Press.


Urban, G. 1996. “Entextualization, Replication, and Power.” In Silverstein, M. and Urban, G. eds. Natural Histories of Discourse. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 21-44.


Wilce, J. M. 2009. Crying Shame: Metaculture, Modernity, and the Exaggerated Death of Lament. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

 

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DEBORAH BECK

University of TEXAS

 

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Homeric Allusions in the Parodos of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon

 

Readings of Agamemnon 49-59, the simile in the parodos comparing the Atreidae setting out for Troy to vultures bereft of their children, have assumed without discussion that an Odyssean parallel (Od. 16.216-19) provides a straightforward representation of the same idea (e.g. Fraenkel ad loc., Lebeck 1971, Heath 2009).  In fact, the Odyssey simile intertwines family bereavement (vultures who have lost their chicks to a hunter) with a narrative of great family joy (the reunion of Telemachus and Odysseus).  The tone of the Odyssean passage emphasizes that joy is missing from both the parodos and the Agamemnon: the parodos begins with the start of the expedition to right a family wrong that ends, for Odysseus but not Agamemnon, with a happy family reunion.

            Critics have sometimes balked at such nuanced readings of Homeric references in Aeschylus (e.g. reviews of Garner 1990; Fraenkel 1950: 38) doubting that an audience could understand them in real time.  This seems misguided: if the allusions themselves are compelling, that need not entail as part of the performance context an audience where all or even most individuals would grasp these references.  Like all great popular art, the success of the Agamemnon does not depend on everyone in the audience entirely understanding all of its rich and complex imagery or the depth of its allusions.  The play tells different stories to different people, including the extent to which different people could make sense of its Homeric allusions, and this is part of its greatness.

 

Works cited:

 

Fraenkel, E., ed.  1950.  Aeschylus Agamemnon (text and commentary, 3 vols).  Oxford.

Garner, R. 1990.  From Homer to Tragedy: The Art of Allusion in Greek Poetry.  London/New York.

Heath, J.  2009. “Disentangling the Beast: Humans and Other Animals in Aeschylus’ Oresteia.”  JHS 119: 17-47.

Lebeck, A.  1971.  The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure.  Cambridge (Mass.)

 

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ELIZABETH MINCHIN

Australian National University

 

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Memories Become Story: Homer’s Poetics of Persuasion

 

The Iliad is a poem that is shaped by the success or the failure of the persuasive efforts of its heroes. Each significant attempt at persuasion is marked by a story of some kind. Much critical attention has been paid to the relevance and the import of these exempla, and the ways in which the poet may have adapted pre-existing narratives to the immediate present. This paper, by contrast, examines how the poet conceives of the performance of persuasion by viewing a selection of these paradigmatic stories in terms of their respective contexts, the memories that shape them, and the memories they elicit.

         There are two anchor-points for my discussion. First, for some perspectives on the temporal horizons of the memories the poet of the Iliad draws on, I have turned to the work of Jan Assmann on memory, identity, and time. Second, I turn to Hugo Bowles’ account of conversational storytelling with a focus on both its interactional aspects and the criterion of ‘tellability’.

            In considering first-person stories and second-person stories, shared memories, and ‘remindings’, I show how the poet’s characters, in performing persuasion, ‘demonstrate’ a relationship with their own memories, an awareness of the memories of others, and a capacity to exploit for their own ends the potential of the memories they share.

 

Works cited:

 

Assmann, J.  (2008). ‘Communicative and cultural memory’, in A. Erll and A. Nunning, eds, Cultural memory studies: an international and interdisciplinary handbook, Berlin and New York, De Gruyter, 109-118.

 

Bowles, H. (2010). Storytelling and drama: exploring narrative episodes in plays, Amsterdam, John Benjamins.

 

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JASPER GAUNT

Emory University

 

 

Between Page, Stage and Symposium:

Circe and Her Audiences in Archaic and Classical Greece

 

The story of Circe has recently attracted lively attention. Besides a monograph by M. Bettini and C. Franco, several articles have addressed various aspects of the story, both Greek and Roman. Among the former, J.D.McClymont has described her character in the Odyssey; N. Marinatos has discussed her magic and amulets; N. Lampis has surveyed representations of Circe in Athenian vase-painting; and D.Bouvier has discussed what Odysseus read on the inscribed tablets shown him by Circe.

         Perhaps surprisingly for such a wonderful story, one which might have been thought to lend itself so well to artists, poets and playwrights alike, the evidence for its circulation in archaic and classical times is relatively scarce. This paper seeks to address Circe in the archaeological record, emphasising the profound differences in approaches to her story that lie behind the artistic representations throughout the Greek world. This is particularly clear in the Athenian and Boeotian fabrics of painted pottery but can be inferred elsewhere. What also becomes clear from examining the images of Odysseus’ men transformed into a variety of animals (not only pigs and boars but also lions, donkeys, bulls and rams) is that their iconography is closely related to early representations of actors in costume (most famously as birds, but also as donkeys, bulls, and other creatures). The geographical distribution of the archaeological material and the great range of differences within it is suggestive of a story that thrived not only in narrative but also in performance and in the oral tradition.

 

 

 

 

RACHEL ZELNICK-ABRAMOVITZ

Tel Aviv University

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“Who Are You and Where Do You Come From?”

Mythical Language in Herodotus

 

Much has been written about Herodotus’ attitude to and use of myth, as well as about his debt to oral — primarily Homeric — poetry. Whereas most studies discuss Herodotus’ historiographical methodology and narratological techniques, my interest is in the language he employs in recounting myths or traditional. In several such places Herodotus uses set, formulaic language, which marks out the text as different from the historical, “factual” narrative or immediately associates it with the epic language and tradition. This language not only corresponds with the epic tradition; it also shows how myth is inscribed into the new genre, how myths and traditional stories are adapted to suit the historical narrative and how the latter is shaped by them. In this paper I will focus on the formulaic question “who are you and where do you come from”, with its variants, an expression which forms part of a set of questions addressed to visitors in Homer and the Drama. Being applied in Herodotus mostly to the narration of myths or semi-mythical narratives, this formulaic set of questions – whether employed in oratio recta or obliqua – immediately associates the stories with the epic traditional language. In this way, the myth that has been disguised as history by skilfully interweaving it into the historical narration or by presenting it as a rational version learned by inquiry, becomes myth again and marks its oral, performed origin.

 

 

 

RUTH SCODEL

University of Michigan

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Epitaph and Ritual

 

This paper responds to Joseph Day’s “Rituals in Stone: Early Greek Epitaphs and Monuments” (JHS 109 [1989] 16-28)—not as polemic for its own sake, but because this article has been so influential that I think we need to consider the other side.  Day argues that inscribed monuments in some sense re-enact ritual for outsiders: “The vocal aspect of funerary ritual is thus imagined as continuing into the future as oral praise poetry for the deceased.”  While a few epitaphs recall the funeral or thrênos (Hansen 159 explicitly addresses anyone who missed the funeral), most do not, and most cannot have been erected as a part of the original rites (as the mound is piled in Homer).  A culture’s repertory of commemorative topoi will be limited, so there will inevitably be similarities between an inscribed epitaph and a lament, but similarities of theme and general purpose do not make the epitaph an extension of the funeral. More important, though, methodologically we should not t expand the category of “ritual” to the point at which it no longer distinguishes one practice from another.  I would suggest that we consider ritual and inscription, whether epitaph or, for example, victory dedication, about which Day has made a very similar argument (in Liddell and Low, Inscriptions and their Uses in Greek and Latin Literature [Oxford 2013] 217-30) as complementary actions, one ritual, the other not, one oral and performative, the other dependent on literacy.

 

 

 

GRETA HAWES

Australian National University

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Mythographical Topography and the (Dis)ordering of Myth:

the Case of Antoninus Liberalis

 

As a genre, mythography was ‘born written’. It is not merely that it emerged as a product of the early flourishing of literacy in Greece (Fowler 2013, xii, xvii); by the end of the fourth century BC it was inextricably connected to the ‘hyper-literate’ environment of textual scholarship (Hawes 2014). This atmosphere fundamentally shaped what we describe in this paper as the ‘topography’ of mythography, that is the narrative interventions and organisational strategies which mythographers used to structure their work (Delattre 2013). Moreover, since mythographers are intimately concerned with systematising myth as a form of ‘cultural knowledge’ (Cameron 2004, xii), we might understand mythography as a kind of ‘index’ to myth and thus its topographical habits as a crucial element of the ways it could bring order – and disorder – to the mythic system.

         If Gérard Genette is correct in attributing to texts a ‘spatialité littéraire active et non passive, signifiante et non signifiée’ (Genette 1969, 44), then we must recognise the autonomous creative agency of even such seemingly compliatory works such as the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis. Antoninus Liberalis’ work is a carefully composed and creative anthology of historiae. The logic of this anthology is deduced from the repetitive composition of each narrative and from the global arrangement of the tales. Therefore, reading the Metamorphoses as an indexed collection is possible if we take into account the topographical experience of the reader’s eye, and the implications of the concept of topos in antiquity, especially in its connection to the workings of memory (Delattre 2016). The fact that the author introduces recognisable names performing unfamiliar acts, and unfamiliar names performing recognisable acts, acquires a new meaning if we consider that Antoninus Liberalis alludes to past and present poetic versions, even when he admits explicitly no acknowledgement of alternative traditions. The singularity and linearity of Antoninus Liberalis’ approach thus creates an idiomatic mythic topography which is dependent on a vast world of mythic knowledge, but in no way co-terminous with it. A consequence of a topographical approach of the Metamorphoses is the possibility of defining the topos of the metamorphosis story type, a commonplace created not through abstract analysis but through the practical graphic repetition of exempla.

 

Works cited :

 

Cameron, A. 2004. Greek Mythography in the Roman World. Oxford.

Delattre, Ch. 2013. ‘Pentaméron mythographique. Les Grecs ont-ils écrit leurs mythes ?’ Lalies 33: 77-170

Delattre, Ch. 2016. ‘Lectures et usages du Sur les fleuves du pseudo-Plutarque.’ In Lire les mythes. Formes, usages et visées des pratiques mythographiques de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, edited by A. Zucker, J. Fabre-Serris, J.-Y. Tilliette & G. Besson, 143-160. Lille.

Fowler, R. L. 2013. Early Greek Mythography II. Oxford.

Genette, G. 1969. ‘La littérature et l’espace.’ In Figures II. Paris.

Hawes, G. 2014. ‘Story time at the library: Palaephatus and the emergence of a hyper-literate mythology.’ In Between Orality and Literacy: Communication and Adaptation in Antiquity, edited by Ruth Scodel, 125–47. Leiden.

Neschke-Hentschke, A. B. 1987. “Mythe et traitement littéraire du mythe en Grèce ancienne.” SCO 37: 29–60.

 

 

 

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RAY PERSON

Ohio Northern University

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Multimodality and Metonymy: Deuteronomy as a Test Case

 

Early studies in conversation analysis focused exclusively upon the verbal aspects of communication, especially since the data primarily came from telephone calls in which other forms of communication were absent even from those participating in the talk. However, with advancements in video-recording equipment, conversation analysts now emphasize the multimodality of communication—that is, talk-in-interaction occurs in contexts in which verbal and visual communication are closely connected.

      The comparative study of oral traditions, especially in the work of John Miles Foley, has emphasized the metonymic quality of the oral traditional register in narratives.

In this paper, I will draw from multimodality as understood in conversation analysis and metonymy as understood in the comparative study of oral traditions to understand better the relationship between different media in the narratives of God’s relationship to God’s people in the Book of Deuteronomy, including the relationships between orality and textuality as well as how certain rituals express the tradition in its multimodal breadth (for example, Deut 12:1-11 on the offering of the first fruits). We will see that traditional narratives were communicated metonymically no matter which medium may have been emphasized within the broader context of multimodality.

 

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OLIVIER MOSER

HEP Lausanne

 

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Ritualizing the Reading.

About Plato’s Corybantic Narratology

 

In 2015, a study of E. Wasmuth has been published in the first issue of Classical Quarterly 65. This paper points out some new views on Plato’s treatment of corybantic rituals. Indeed, the research of Wasmuth aims at showing the extent of the platonic analogy between corybantic rituals and logos. Taking over from the works of I.M. Linsforth, she discusses the six references of corybantism inside Plato’s works (Euthyd. 277 d-e, Laws VII 790 d – 791 a, Phaedrus 228 b/ 234 d, Crito 54 d, Ion 533 e – 534 b/ 536c, Symp. 215 e).

        Measuring the significance and the novelty of her study about the presence of corybantism in the platonic dialogues, we would evaluate the results of her analysis and then the consequences and the effects that it can have for our contemporary understanding of the status of the reading for Plato.

           Following in the footsteps of Wasmuth and attempting to develop further the Logos/Corybantism correlation, this paper would show that Plato draws ritual patterns from corybantism which he converts into narrative structures. From rituals, Plato extracts also some narrative structures that allow him to recreate by way of writing the oral skills of Socrates’ maieutics and dialectics. The problem of our study consists thus mostly of determining how occurs this conversion/extraction of the corybantic rituals into narrative patterns at the borders between orality and literacy.

 

Bibliography:

 

M. Canto (1987), L’intrigue philosophique, essai sur l’Euthydème de Platon, précédé d’une traduction, Les Belles Lettres, Paris.

I. M. Linforth (1946), The corybantic rites in Plato, University of California Press.

H. Maldiney (1991), Penser l’homme et la folie, Jérôme Millon, Grenoble, 2007.

M. Miller (1996), « The arguments I seem to hear: argument and irony in the Crito », Phronesis 41 (2), p. 121 – 137.

O. Moser, (2015), « L’écriture protéiforme de Platon », Plasticité n°1, Université de Toulouse.

P. Murray (1996), Plato. On poetry, Cambridge University Press

E. Voutiras (1996), « Un culte domestique des corybantes », Kernos 9, p. 243 – 246.

 

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