Studies in Ancient Literature
Greek Choral Lyric in its Ritual Context
The seminar will be devoted to consideration of archaic Greek choral poetry as embedded in its ritual and religious contexts (focusing mainly on Pindar’s epinikia, but possibly also including some compositions of Alkman, Simonides, and Bacchylides). My starting point is the reflection that monodic lyric (e.g., Sappho, Alkaios, Anakreon), although it does not really conform to post-Romantic models of the privacy and subjectivity of lyric voice, is still much more accessible to a style of reading informed by post-Romantic assumptions. Archaic choral lyric, in contrast, is often difficult, obscure, and inaccessible not just because it is fragmentary, but also because it is so deeply enmeshed in (partially or entirely lost) contexts of religious occasion and ritual action. I would therefore like to approach the reading of epinikion by trying, insofar as it is possible, to reconstruct the ritual surround and re-embed therein the bare texts we possess. This will entail simultaneous reading of other kinds of sources (e.g., epigraphic, later prose) to try to develop a “thick description” of archaic choral performance contexts.
We will start with several weeks reading Plato’s Laws Books 1-3 and 7, and then move to choral lyric poetry. Possibly some work on “Pindar and the Monuments,” setting individual poems or clusters of poems in their local religious/ritual /topographic contexts (e.g., P.4, P.5, P.9 in Kyrene; Pindar fr. 94b, P.11, I.1, I.3/4, I.7 in Thebes; Aeginetan Odes).