Chloe Borowska | University of Otago (original) (raw)

Chloe Borowska

My current research explores human interactions with the environment in Greek narrative poetry (8th-5th c. BCE) from a broadly phenomenological perspective. In particular, I focus on how poetry evokes the bodily experience of the environment, intensifying the audience’s immersion in the narrative. Interactions between the body and the environment in poetry can reflect the relationship between humans and the natural world, revealing tensions surrounding identity, perception, and agency which characterise the human desire for an essentially intelligible, or predictable, world.

I was previously Leverhulme Fellow at Heidelberg University (2020-2022), where I explored the relationship between landscape, time, and emotion in early Greek poetry. I found that descriptions of landscape could encourage different experiences of narrative time, which in turn could direct the emotional responses of the audience.

My PhD thesis, completed at the University of St Andrews (2015-2019) under the supervision of Dr Jon Hesk and Professor Jason König, interrogated the concept of liminality in the landscapes of Greek tragedy. I found that landscapes which are often labelled as liminal and separate in modern scholarship can also play a connective role in tragedy, linking times, places, and concepts. I supported this finding by examining the sea using critical theory, mountains from the perspective of phenomenology, and meadows using theory from cognitive linguistics.

I began my Classics journey as an undergraduate and Master's student at the University of Otago.

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Papers by Chloe Borowska

The Classical Quarterly

This article explores the propensity of Iliadic landscape similes to encourage reflections on hum... more This article explores the propensity of Iliadic landscape similes to encourage reflections on human fragility. Landscape in the similes is usually interpreted as a medium which conveys a consistent symbolic value (for example storms as the hostility of nature); however, landscape is often a more flexible medium. By offering close readings of three Iliadic similes (winter torrents at 4.452–6, snowfall at 12.279–89 and clear night at 8.555–9), this article argues that landscape allowed the poet to frame the main narrative in various ways, both helping the listener to imagine described events and interrupting the listener's immersion in the main narrative. While many have analysed how similes offer analogies to the main narrative, the ways in which the same simile can also disrupt and reframe the narrative are less understood. This article observes that shifts in narrative space and time played a key role in changing the perspective of the listener. Taking a broadly phenomenologica...

Mountains of Memory: A Phenomenological Approach to Mountains in Fifth-Century BCE Greek Tragedy

Dawn Hollis and Jason König (eds) Mountain Dialogues from Antiquity to Modernity. Bloomsbury, 2021

Modern tourists and mountaineers often describe their experience of mountains in highly sensory t... more Modern tourists and mountaineers often describe their experience of mountains in highly sensory terms, frequently alluding to the mythical and historical pasts which they ascribe to mountainous landscapes. Such experiences are more difficult to identify in fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy. Utilising phenomenological theories on sensory perception, embodied experience, and the stimulation of memory through environment, this chapter reconstructs the ancient experience of mountains through Euripides’ Bacchae and its treatment of Mount Kithairon. It identifies visceral description of movement, song, and sensory stimuli which would have brought the audience’s remembered experiences into contact with literary space. The same mountain in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos links mythical time with narrative space through evocation of aural resonance. Finally, the beacon scene of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon uses mountains as memory-places to literally bridge the gap between Greece and Troy. Mountains in Greek tragedy could thus link places, myth, characters, remembered history, and personal experience.

Limits of dread: ἐσχατιά, πεῖραρ, and dangerous edge-space in Homeric formulae

Felton, D. (ed.) Landscapes of Dread in Classical Antiquity: Negative Emotion in Natural and Constructed Landscapes. Routledge, 2018

Semantic analyses of the words ἔσχατα (“furthest edge”) and πεῖραρ (“boundary” or “bond”) in Home... more Semantic analyses of the words ἔσχατα (“furthest edge”) and πεῖραρ (“boundary” or “bond”) in Homeric formulae reveal distinctive understandings of marginal space. Whereas ἔσχατα frequently denotes isolated space, where a character might be approaching or protected from surrounding danger, πεῖραρ demonstrates a thematic association between the edges of the earth, the divinely appointed ὀλέθρου/νίκης πείρατα (“boundaries of destruction/victory”) and death. The intratextual networks built by these words suggest a traditionally referential relationship with mental “schemas” shared by the audience. Their potential to communicate multifaceted, unspoken ideas indicates the depth and antiquity of anxiety connected to marginal spaces in Greek thought.