‘Hail and Take Pleasure!’ Making Gods Present In Narration Through Choral Song and Other Epiphanic Strategies in the Homeric Hymns to Dionysus and Apollo, in: C. Tsagalis, A. Markantonatos (ed.), The Winnowing Oar. New Perspectives in Homeric Studies, Berlin/New York: 2017, 231–266, corrected proofs (original) (raw)
Related papers
‘Lyric’ Atmosphere in Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus (With an Analysis of Theocritus 18)
Trends in Classics, 2017
This study examines a representative selection of Hellenistic instances of choroi in the works of the three main poets, Apollonius Rhodius, Theocritus and Callimachus. It does so through the notions of 'choral self-referentiality', 'choral mediation' and the stratagem of 'choral projection'. Although Hellenistic choreia probably does not belong to the performative and multi-media milieu alongside lyric or tragic productions, it brings to the fore the continuity between archaic lyric poetry and Hellenistic poetry. This continuity largely consists in the tragic re-use of the choral element and the choral performance.
Hermetically Unsealed: Lyric Genres in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes
Most of the other chapters in this book centre on lyric texts; Spelman's explores parallelisms between the address to the Deliades in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and passages from lyric on issues such as the presentation of authorship and of textual fixity across multiple performance events. I too will discuss a Homeric hymn, namely the Hymn to Hermes, but what this hymn offers is, by contrast, a late archaic or early classical Greek viewpoint on lyric 'from the outside'.
This paper studies the reception of the Homeric Hymns in some pagan and Christian poets of Late Antiquity. It offers some methodological remarks on ‘quotations’ or ‘allusions’ and re-use of epic code; and on the need to distinguish between instances of epic language reused by Late Antique poets and actual quotations or borrowings from the Homeric Hymns. After an overall view on the presence of the Hymns in some major poets of Late Antiquity (especially Nonnus of Panopolis, Proclus, the Orphic Argonautica), I deal with the reception of the Hymns to Hermes, whose presence can be detected in papyri, inscriptions and highbrow poems (either pagans or Christians) from the second century until the fifth century AD. I argue that in Late Antiquity the concept of epic code was extended to the whole Homeric corpus, probably by the influence of school education.
Commenting on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes: Between Philology and History
Les hymnes constituaient en Grèce antique un vaste ensemble, la plupart des cérémonies reli gieuses donnant lieu à des chants qui célébraient les divinités. De cette masse poétique et musicale, il ne nous reste cependant que des bribes, gravées dans la pierre des temples ou transmises par le papyrus et le manuscrit. Leur interprétation se prête tout particulièrement à un débat interdisciplinaire, car ces poèmes obéissent à des conventions formelles tout en ayant connu, pour certains, une utilisation rituelle avérée, et sont donc à la fois des objets pour les commentateurs de la poésie grecque et des sources pour les historiens des cultes. Leur étude oblige chacun à définir avec précision sa conception des champs respectifs de la littérature et de la religion, notions qui, dans le contexte du polythéisme grec, demeurent problématiques.
Pratinas and Euripides: Wild Origins, Choral Self-Reference and Performative Release of Dionysian Energy in Satyr Drama”, in: A. P. Antonopoulos, M. M. Christopoulos, G. W. M. Harrison (eds.), Reconstructing Satyr Drama (MythosEikonPoiesis 12), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2021, 337–359 Tragedy takes its beginning from the ‘satyric’ and choral forms. As a dance genre that is strongly defined by the chorus, the satyr play continually relates back to its own performance. Both in the work of Pratinas’ famous so-called ‘hyporchema’ (TrGF I 4 F 3), here interpreted as belonging to a satyr play, as well as in the Euripidean Kyklops, the damming up and subsequent, explosive release of energy in dance and movement ensue as a genre-determining pattern that is linked to rituals and myths of Dionysos where the exclusion the Dionysian is constitutive. In contrast to the majority of interpreters, who postulate a protest against another chorus or half-chorus, I conjecture that Pratinas’ chorus continually recurs to its own performance. On the basis of insight into the ludic nature of Dionysos and his retinue of satyrs, as well as of new perspectives on deixis, choral self-referentiality and performative contexts of play, I argue that the satyrs refer totally to their own action in the orchestra, to their singing and dancing. In a grotesque way, the attack is directed against themselves. The key to this understanding lies in their absurd mindset of wishing to distance themselves from their actual Dionysian performance through their claim to more pleasant, Apolline musical forms. In the Kyklops, the single, completely extant satyr play that is likewise full of choral self-references, something very similar happens. Only here, satyrs do not deny Dionysos himself; rather, a fairy-tale monster has to answer for the separation from their deity.