L. A. Swift
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199577842
- eISBN:
- 9780191722622
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577842.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter explores how Greek tragedy evokes hymenaios. The chapter begins with a discussion of the role that choral song played in the Greek wedding, and a discussion of Sappho's hymenaioi and ...
More
This chapter explores how Greek tragedy evokes hymenaios. The chapter begins with a discussion of the role that choral song played in the Greek wedding, and a discussion of Sappho's hymenaioi and poetry by other authors which imitated hymenaeal forms. The second part of the chapter looks at how tragedy makes use of hymenaios, including the so‐called ‘marriage‐to‐death’ motif, whereby a young girl's death is described as a form of marriage. The chapter also investigates mixed‐sex choral performance as a hymenaeal trope, and examines two plays (Euripides' Hippolytus and Aeschylus' Suppliant Women) where mixed‐sex choruses are used to highlight themes of marriage and of dysfunctional sexuality.Less
This chapter explores how Greek tragedy evokes hymenaios. The chapter begins with a discussion of the role that choral song played in the Greek wedding, and a discussion of Sappho's hymenaioi and poetry by other authors which imitated hymenaeal forms. The second part of the chapter looks at how tragedy makes use of hymenaios, including the so‐called ‘marriage‐to‐death’ motif, whereby a young girl's death is described as a form of marriage. The chapter also investigates mixed‐sex choral performance as a hymenaeal trope, and examines two plays (Euripides' Hippolytus and Aeschylus' Suppliant Women) where mixed‐sex choruses are used to highlight themes of marriage and of dysfunctional sexuality.
Simon Goldhill
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691149844
- eISBN:
- 9781400840076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691149844.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines one of the paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, which concerns the space of desire—a Greek scene, the gap between a man and a woman, the touch of a girl and a woman—and how this ...
More
This chapter examines one of the paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, which concerns the space of desire—a Greek scene, the gap between a man and a woman, the touch of a girl and a woman—and how this space is traversed by critics and viewers, then and now. The painting in question is Sappho, now usually called Sappho and Alcaeus, that was exhibited in the Royal Academy by Alma-Tadema in 1881. The chapter considers the shifting recognition of desire in readers' receptions of a Victorian image of the classical past—and the interpretative lures and snags of such an enquiry. It demonstrates how desire speaks and silences its name in art by analyzing not only the image of a poet from antiquity, but also the most famous female poet of ancient Greece, Sappho, whose name has become synonymous with the expression of female desire.Less
This chapter examines one of the paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, which concerns the space of desire—a Greek scene, the gap between a man and a woman, the touch of a girl and a woman—and how this space is traversed by critics and viewers, then and now. The painting in question is Sappho, now usually called Sappho and Alcaeus, that was exhibited in the Royal Academy by Alma-Tadema in 1881. The chapter considers the shifting recognition of desire in readers' receptions of a Victorian image of the classical past—and the interpretative lures and snags of such an enquiry. It demonstrates how desire speaks and silences its name in art by analyzing not only the image of a poet from antiquity, but also the most famous female poet of ancient Greece, Sappho, whose name has become synonymous with the expression of female desire.
G. O. Hutchinson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199279418
- eISBN:
- 9780191707322
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199279418.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The discussion of Horace's lyric is taken beyond the previous chapter. The book of Epodes and each book of Odes are seen to have a dynamic structure, to move decisively. Horace uses Archilochus and ...
More
The discussion of Horace's lyric is taken beyond the previous chapter. The book of Epodes and each book of Odes are seen to have a dynamic structure, to move decisively. Horace uses Archilochus and Hipponax and Alcaeus, Sappho, and other Greek lyric poets in the creation of structures which revolve around the relation of and tension between art and the narrator. These are metaliterary books, concerned with themselves. Papyri of lyric and related texts are used to show the scholarly and critical tradition which would have shaped Horace's reading and study of lyric. The arrangement of poems in lyric papyri is considered, and Horace's intertextuality with a complex tradition explored.Less
The discussion of Horace's lyric is taken beyond the previous chapter. The book of Epodes and each book of Odes are seen to have a dynamic structure, to move decisively. Horace uses Archilochus and Hipponax and Alcaeus, Sappho, and other Greek lyric poets in the creation of structures which revolve around the relation of and tension between art and the narrator. These are metaliterary books, concerned with themselves. Papyri of lyric and related texts are used to show the scholarly and critical tradition which would have shaped Horace's reading and study of lyric. The arrangement of poems in lyric papyri is considered, and Horace's intertextuality with a complex tradition explored.
Michael Fontaine
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195341447
- eISBN:
- 9780199866915
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341447.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter continues the investigation of Plautus’ use of irony and innuendo. Jokes and riddles in Poenulus, Rudens, Amphitryo, and Stichus suggest that characters’ onstage actions occasionally ...
More
This chapter continues the investigation of Plautus’ use of irony and innuendo. Jokes and riddles in Poenulus, Rudens, Amphitryo, and Stichus suggest that characters’ onstage actions occasionally betray their claims or that the jokes they make sometimes presuppose a Greek background. Discussion then turns to the composition and character of Plautus’ audience. Contrary to many prevailing views, it is concluded from archaeological, demographic, and literary evidence that Plautus’ primary audience was essentially aristocratic, alert, well educated, philhellenic, sophisticated, and reasonably well acquainted through education with Greek literature and culture, including the comedy of Menander and Greek oratory. Extended discussions include the Roman “Bacchanalia affair” of 186 bc alongside Plautus’ Truculentus and a speech of Hyperides, connections between the poetry of Sappho and Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus and Curculio (Gorgylio), and connections between the poetry of Callimachus and Plautus’ Pseudolus (Pseudylus). It is concluded that Plautus should be seen as an author in tune with the poetic currents and developments of the contemporary Hellenistic world rather than wholly divorced from them.Less
This chapter continues the investigation of Plautus’ use of irony and innuendo. Jokes and riddles in Poenulus, Rudens, Amphitryo, and Stichus suggest that characters’ onstage actions occasionally betray their claims or that the jokes they make sometimes presuppose a Greek background. Discussion then turns to the composition and character of Plautus’ audience. Contrary to many prevailing views, it is concluded from archaeological, demographic, and literary evidence that Plautus’ primary audience was essentially aristocratic, alert, well educated, philhellenic, sophisticated, and reasonably well acquainted through education with Greek literature and culture, including the comedy of Menander and Greek oratory. Extended discussions include the Roman “Bacchanalia affair” of 186 bc alongside Plautus’ Truculentus and a speech of Hyperides, connections between the poetry of Sappho and Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus and Curculio (Gorgylio), and connections between the poetry of Callimachus and Plautus’ Pseudolus (Pseudylus). It is concluded that Plautus should be seen as an author in tune with the poetic currents and developments of the contemporary Hellenistic world rather than wholly divorced from them.
H. L. Meakin
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184553
- eISBN:
- 9780191674297
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184553.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This book is a historical and theoretical study of some of John Donne's less frequently discussed poetry and prose; it interrogates various trends that have dominated Donne criticism, such as the ...
More
This book is a historical and theoretical study of some of John Donne's less frequently discussed poetry and prose; it interrogates various trends that have dominated Donne criticism, such as the widely divergent views about his attitudes towards women, the focus on the Songs and Sonnets to the exclusion of his other works, and the tendency to separate discussions of his poetry and prose. On a broader scale, it joins a small but growing number of feminist re-readings of Donne's works. Using the cultural criticism of French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray, the book explores works throughout Donne's career, from his earliest verse letters to sermons preached while Divinity Reader at Lincoln's Inn and Dean of St. Paul's in London. Donne's articulations of four feminine figures in particular are examined: the Muse, Sappho, Eve as ‘the mother of mankind’, and a young girl who lived and died in Donne's own time, Elizabeth Drury. The book's reading of Donne's self-described ‘masculine persuasive force’ asserting itself upon the ‘incomprehensibleness’ of the feminine suggests that the Donne canon needs to be reassessed as even richer and more complex than previously asserted, and that his reputation as a supreme Renaissance poet — revived at the beginning of this century — needs to be carried into the next.Less
This book is a historical and theoretical study of some of John Donne's less frequently discussed poetry and prose; it interrogates various trends that have dominated Donne criticism, such as the widely divergent views about his attitudes towards women, the focus on the Songs and Sonnets to the exclusion of his other works, and the tendency to separate discussions of his poetry and prose. On a broader scale, it joins a small but growing number of feminist re-readings of Donne's works. Using the cultural criticism of French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray, the book explores works throughout Donne's career, from his earliest verse letters to sermons preached while Divinity Reader at Lincoln's Inn and Dean of St. Paul's in London. Donne's articulations of four feminine figures in particular are examined: the Muse, Sappho, Eve as ‘the mother of mankind’, and a young girl who lived and died in Donne's own time, Elizabeth Drury. The book's reading of Donne's self-described ‘masculine persuasive force’ asserting itself upon the ‘incomprehensibleness’ of the feminine suggests that the Donne canon needs to be reassessed as even richer and more complex than previously asserted, and that his reputation as a supreme Renaissance poet — revived at the beginning of this century — needs to be carried into the next.
J.A. North
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199572069
- eISBN:
- 9780191738739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572069.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
The decorative scheme of the Underground Basilica near the Porta Maggiore in Rome includes a wide variety of representations of everyday life, strange rituals, mythical scenes, and scenes from ...
More
The decorative scheme of the Underground Basilica near the Porta Maggiore in Rome includes a wide variety of representations of everyday life, strange rituals, mythical scenes, and scenes from tragedy. This chapter argues that the choice of figures represented and the myths adopted and adapted in the scheme strongly suggest that those responsible were re-appropriating and employing myths and images from the pagan tradition to create and express their own evolving religious ideas. Sappho's leap evidently played a central role in their conception and, even if the use made of the basilica itself cannot now be established, its religious language seems to represent an important development in the history of pagan religion.Less
The decorative scheme of the Underground Basilica near the Porta Maggiore in Rome includes a wide variety of representations of everyday life, strange rituals, mythical scenes, and scenes from tragedy. This chapter argues that the choice of figures represented and the myths adopted and adapted in the scheme strongly suggest that those responsible were re-appropriating and employing myths and images from the pagan tradition to create and express their own evolving religious ideas. Sappho's leap evidently played a central role in their conception and, even if the use made of the basilica itself cannot now be established, its religious language seems to represent an important development in the history of pagan religion.
Jonathan Lamb
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182641
- eISBN:
- 9780191673849
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182641.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter argues that Pope's struggle to disintricate his sense of subjective vulnerability from the judgements he directs against a culpable public manifestation of particularity is thrown in ...
More
This chapter argues that Pope's struggle to disintricate his sense of subjective vulnerability from the judgements he directs against a culpable public manifestation of particularity is thrown in relief by studying the parallels that extend between Pope's desire to destroy the sublime of Sir Richard Blackmore's A Paraphrase on the Book of Job and his fascination, growing into disgust, with ‘the Symptoms of an Amorous Fury’ he locates in the literary remains of Sappho. If Blackmore and Balaam strike Pope as the unhappy leftovers of Job's sublime, no less do the writings and person of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu strike him as the noisome detritus of Sappho's.Less
This chapter argues that Pope's struggle to disintricate his sense of subjective vulnerability from the judgements he directs against a culpable public manifestation of particularity is thrown in relief by studying the parallels that extend between Pope's desire to destroy the sublime of Sir Richard Blackmore's A Paraphrase on the Book of Job and his fascination, growing into disgust, with ‘the Symptoms of an Amorous Fury’ he locates in the literary remains of Sappho. If Blackmore and Balaam strike Pope as the unhappy leftovers of Job's sublime, no less do the writings and person of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu strike him as the noisome detritus of Sappho's.
H. L. Meakin
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184553
- eISBN:
- 9780191674297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184553.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the articulation of the feminine in the prose and poetry of English poet John Donne. This book analyses a number of ...
More
This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the articulation of the feminine in the prose and poetry of English poet John Donne. This book analyses a number of Donne's more neglected works including his early verse letters, an epithalamium, a wedding sermon, the heroical epistle Sappho to Philaenis, and the epitaph and funeral elegy written for Elizabeth Drury. It examines Donne's portrayal of the individual feminine figures in his works and his representations of the relations between gender positions.Less
This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the articulation of the feminine in the prose and poetry of English poet John Donne. This book analyses a number of Donne's more neglected works including his early verse letters, an epithalamium, a wedding sermon, the heroical epistle Sappho to Philaenis, and the epitaph and funeral elegy written for Elizabeth Drury. It examines Donne's portrayal of the individual feminine figures in his works and his representations of the relations between gender positions.
H. L. Meakin
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184553
- eISBN:
- 9780191674297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184553.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter examines John Donne's lesbian love poem Sappho to Philaenis. It discusses the possible reasons for and implications of this poem's near invisibility and its relegation beyond the margins ...
More
This chapter examines John Donne's lesbian love poem Sappho to Philaenis. It discusses the possible reasons for and implications of this poem's near invisibility and its relegation beyond the margins of Donne's canon. It suggests that Donne's representation of lesbian love arises out of a desire to synthesize the unitive perfections of the marriage relationship and the Renaissance ideal of friendship between equals.Less
This chapter examines John Donne's lesbian love poem Sappho to Philaenis. It discusses the possible reasons for and implications of this poem's near invisibility and its relegation beyond the margins of Donne's canon. It suggests that Donne's representation of lesbian love arises out of a desire to synthesize the unitive perfections of the marriage relationship and the Renaissance ideal of friendship between equals.
Todd W. Reeser
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226307008
- eISBN:
- 9780226307145
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226307145.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter historicizes queer theory’s insight that lesbianism is often linked to a problem of representation by focusing on links between questions of reading and Platonic-inflected female-female ...
More
This chapter historicizes queer theory’s insight that lesbianism is often linked to a problem of representation by focusing on links between questions of reading and Platonic-inflected female-female erotic love. It first establishes the complicated discursive context of this larger hermeneutic question through the reception of Sapphic sexuality and, especially, of the female-female being who makes a brief appearance in Aristophanes’s myth of the origin of love from the Symposium. The chapter then turns to one of the very few Neoplatonic representations of female-female eros in the Renaissance, a series of poems by male poets written in the voice of a woman in love with another woman. Embedded within the poems by Jodelle, Tyard, and Ronsard are Neoplatonic commonplaces as well as references to male-male love. The poems are not so much inscribing same-sex female sexuality in the Neoplatonic tradition as much as they are writing it out by decorporealizing love between women. But also, the poets who write about female-female love are also inherently evoking male-male homoeroticism as a way to experience it vicariously, and for this reason, the “lesbian” poems can be taken as a newly-developed and rather sophisticated way to set Plato straight by detour.Less
This chapter historicizes queer theory’s insight that lesbianism is often linked to a problem of representation by focusing on links between questions of reading and Platonic-inflected female-female erotic love. It first establishes the complicated discursive context of this larger hermeneutic question through the reception of Sapphic sexuality and, especially, of the female-female being who makes a brief appearance in Aristophanes’s myth of the origin of love from the Symposium. The chapter then turns to one of the very few Neoplatonic representations of female-female eros in the Renaissance, a series of poems by male poets written in the voice of a woman in love with another woman. Embedded within the poems by Jodelle, Tyard, and Ronsard are Neoplatonic commonplaces as well as references to male-male love. The poems are not so much inscribing same-sex female sexuality in the Neoplatonic tradition as much as they are writing it out by decorporealizing love between women. But also, the poets who write about female-female love are also inherently evoking male-male homoeroticism as a way to experience it vicariously, and for this reason, the “lesbian” poems can be taken as a newly-developed and rather sophisticated way to set Plato straight by detour.
Matthew Reynolds
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199605712
- eISBN:
- 9780191731617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199605712.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
‘Translation‐as‐desire’ can mutate into ‘translation as fantasy’: this occurs when the translator's imagination is frustrated by the source with the result that he (this is a predominantly masculine ...
More
‘Translation‐as‐desire’ can mutate into ‘translation as fantasy’: this occurs when the translator's imagination is frustrated by the source with the result that he (this is a predominantly masculine mode) goes off into a dream of his own. The mode flourishes in translations of romance: I dwell on Fairfax's Tasso (1600), and give a counter example from translations of Petrarch in Charlotte Smith's Elegiac Sonnets (1784). But since translation‐as‐fantasy has its main root in the translator's feelings rather than in the source text it leads beyond the boundaries of translation to enormously elaborative responses like Leigh Hunt's The Story of Rimini (massively expanded from Dante's episode of Paoloa and Francesca) and Swinburne's reveries on Sappho.Less
‘Translation‐as‐desire’ can mutate into ‘translation as fantasy’: this occurs when the translator's imagination is frustrated by the source with the result that he (this is a predominantly masculine mode) goes off into a dream of his own. The mode flourishes in translations of romance: I dwell on Fairfax's Tasso (1600), and give a counter example from translations of Petrarch in Charlotte Smith's Elegiac Sonnets (1784). But since translation‐as‐fantasy has its main root in the translator's feelings rather than in the source text it leads beyond the boundaries of translation to enormously elaborative responses like Leigh Hunt's The Story of Rimini (massively expanded from Dante's episode of Paoloa and Francesca) and Swinburne's reveries on Sappho.
Matthew Reynolds
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199605712
- eISBN:
- 9780191731617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199605712.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
In an influential pair of essays in 1711, Addison presented Sappho as a poet of ‘Nature’ whose imagining of love had been much ‘copied’, for instance by Dryden. Copying has been dear to English love ...
More
In an influential pair of essays in 1711, Addison presented Sappho as a poet of ‘Nature’ whose imagining of love had been much ‘copied’, for instance by Dryden. Copying has been dear to English love poetry at least since Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and has been used to explore the elements of constraint and conventionality that are inherent in love as this tradition imagines it: I read Wyatt's versions of Petrarch in the light of this perception. The widespread reiteration of Petrarchan conceits affects how Petrarchan poetry could be translated. When Fairfax spots a bit of Petrarchanism in Tasso he expands it sympathetically, confident in his ability to write in the same mode. But Harington, in his translation of Ariosto (1591), equates Petrarchan tropes with insincerity.Less
In an influential pair of essays in 1711, Addison presented Sappho as a poet of ‘Nature’ whose imagining of love had been much ‘copied’, for instance by Dryden. Copying has been dear to English love poetry at least since Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and has been used to explore the elements of constraint and conventionality that are inherent in love as this tradition imagines it: I read Wyatt's versions of Petrarch in the light of this perception. The widespread reiteration of Petrarchan conceits affects how Petrarchan poetry could be translated. When Fairfax spots a bit of Petrarchanism in Tasso he expands it sympathetically, confident in his ability to write in the same mode. But Harington, in his translation of Ariosto (1591), equates Petrarchan tropes with insincerity.
Andrew Ford
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199733293
- eISBN:
- 9780199918539
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199733293.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
The song to Hermias now takes center stage again, this time using its literary background to highlight the multiple generic stances adopted by the speaker. The song’s opening verses are examined in ...
More
The song to Hermias now takes center stage again, this time using its literary background to highlight the multiple generic stances adopted by the speaker. The song’s opening verses are examined in light of the rhetorical categories of ethos—the speaker’s character as projected by the poem—and pathos—the effects on the audience. A poem by Sappho and an Attic skolion are studied to show that Aristotle blended hymnic form with an old poetic game in which singers discoursed on what is “the finest thing” in life. This heritage suggests that the song’s ethos and pathos have much in common with contemporary protreptic literature. The traditional quality of such a poetic posture and the possibilities it offered for creative expansion and variation are brought out by comparing a very similar discourse on virtue in Sophocles’ Philoctetes.Less
The song to Hermias now takes center stage again, this time using its literary background to highlight the multiple generic stances adopted by the speaker. The song’s opening verses are examined in light of the rhetorical categories of ethos—the speaker’s character as projected by the poem—and pathos—the effects on the audience. A poem by Sappho and an Attic skolion are studied to show that Aristotle blended hymnic form with an old poetic game in which singers discoursed on what is “the finest thing” in life. This heritage suggests that the song’s ethos and pathos have much in common with contemporary protreptic literature. The traditional quality of such a poetic posture and the possibilities it offered for creative expansion and variation are brought out by comparing a very similar discourse on virtue in Sophocles’ Philoctetes.
Gillian Knoll
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474428521
- eISBN:
- 9781474481175
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474428521.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
By consistently refusing to subordinate eros to other actions that characters might undertake in its name, John Lyly confirms that desire itself can be the main event of a play. Chapter 1 explores ...
More
By consistently refusing to subordinate eros to other actions that characters might undertake in its name, John Lyly confirms that desire itself can be the main event of a play. Chapter 1 explores the role of potentiality, what Aristotle calls dunamis, as both the source of erotic change and its medium in John Lyly’s plays. The chapter begins by surveying metaphors of motion and stillness that dramatize subtle erotic changes in Lyly’s plays, and then focuses on idleness, an experience his characters conceive less as physical stasis than as movement without purpose or telos. Idleness has a peculiar, counterintuitive, feel to it in Galatea, a play that explores alternatives to the fast-paced, teleological movement typically associated with sexual pursuit. Galatea, Phillida, and the nymphs who fall in love with them discover the queer erotic potential of circuitous language that prolongs desire and defers closure.Less
By consistently refusing to subordinate eros to other actions that characters might undertake in its name, John Lyly confirms that desire itself can be the main event of a play. Chapter 1 explores the role of potentiality, what Aristotle calls dunamis, as both the source of erotic change and its medium in John Lyly’s plays. The chapter begins by surveying metaphors of motion and stillness that dramatize subtle erotic changes in Lyly’s plays, and then focuses on idleness, an experience his characters conceive less as physical stasis than as movement without purpose or telos. Idleness has a peculiar, counterintuitive, feel to it in Galatea, a play that explores alternatives to the fast-paced, teleological movement typically associated with sexual pursuit. Galatea, Phillida, and the nymphs who fall in love with them discover the queer erotic potential of circuitous language that prolongs desire and defers closure.
Felix J. Meister
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- December 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198847687
- eISBN:
- 9780191882357
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198847687.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This monograph focuses on passages of archaic and classical Greek poetry where certain human individuals in certain moments are presented as approximating to the gods. The approximation pursued is ...
More
This monograph focuses on passages of archaic and classical Greek poetry where certain human individuals in certain moments are presented as approximating to the gods. The approximation pursued is different from any form of immortality, be it apotheosis, hero cult, or fame preserved in song. Instead, this monograph is concerned with the momentary attainment of central aspects characteristic of divine life, such as supreme happiness, unsurpassed beauty, or boundless power. The three main chapters of this monograph (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) illustrate the approximation of human figures to these aspects in wedding songs, victory odes, and drama respectively. This monograph also explores the relationship between such approximations and ritual. In some genres, the surrounding ritual context itself seems to engender a vision of someone as more than human, and this vision is reflected also in other media. In contrast, where such visions are not rooted in ritual, they tend to be more problematic and associated with hubris and transgression. What emerges from this study is the impression of a culture where the boundaries between man and god are more flexible than is commonly thought.Less
This monograph focuses on passages of archaic and classical Greek poetry where certain human individuals in certain moments are presented as approximating to the gods. The approximation pursued is different from any form of immortality, be it apotheosis, hero cult, or fame preserved in song. Instead, this monograph is concerned with the momentary attainment of central aspects characteristic of divine life, such as supreme happiness, unsurpassed beauty, or boundless power. The three main chapters of this monograph (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) illustrate the approximation of human figures to these aspects in wedding songs, victory odes, and drama respectively. This monograph also explores the relationship between such approximations and ritual. In some genres, the surrounding ritual context itself seems to engender a vision of someone as more than human, and this vision is reflected also in other media. In contrast, where such visions are not rooted in ritual, they tend to be more problematic and associated with hubris and transgression. What emerges from this study is the impression of a culture where the boundaries between man and god are more flexible than is commonly thought.
Melina Esse
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226741772
- eISBN:
- 9780226741802
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226741802.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
From the theatrical stage to the literary salon, the figure of Sappho—the ancient poet and inspiring icon of feminine creativity—played a major role in the intertwining histories of improvisation, ...
More
From the theatrical stage to the literary salon, the figure of Sappho—the ancient poet and inspiring icon of feminine creativity—played a major role in the intertwining histories of improvisation, text, and performance throughout the nineteenth century. Exploring the connections between operatic and poetic improvisation in Italy and beyond, Singing Sappho combines earwitness accounts of famous female improviser-virtuosi with erudite analysis of musical and literary practices. Melina Esse demonstrates that performance played a much larger role in conceptions of musical authorship than previously recognized, arguing that discourses of spontaneity—specifically those surrounding the improvvisatrice, or female poetic improviser—were paradoxically used to carve out a new authority for opera composers just as improvisation itself was falling into decline. With this novel and nuanced book, Esse persuasively reclaims the agency of performers and their crucial role in constituting Italian opera as a genre in the nineteenth century.Less
From the theatrical stage to the literary salon, the figure of Sappho—the ancient poet and inspiring icon of feminine creativity—played a major role in the intertwining histories of improvisation, text, and performance throughout the nineteenth century. Exploring the connections between operatic and poetic improvisation in Italy and beyond, Singing Sappho combines earwitness accounts of famous female improviser-virtuosi with erudite analysis of musical and literary practices. Melina Esse demonstrates that performance played a much larger role in conceptions of musical authorship than previously recognized, arguing that discourses of spontaneity—specifically those surrounding the improvvisatrice, or female poetic improviser—were paradoxically used to carve out a new authority for opera composers just as improvisation itself was falling into decline. With this novel and nuanced book, Esse persuasively reclaims the agency of performers and their crucial role in constituting Italian opera as a genre in the nineteenth century.
Thea S. Thorsen and Stephen Harrison (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198829430
- eISBN:
- 9780191867958
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198829430.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, European History: BCE to 500CE
Sappho, a towering figure in Western culture, is an exemplary case in the history of classical receptions. There are three prominent reasons for this. Firstly, Sappho is associated with some of the ...
More
Sappho, a towering figure in Western culture, is an exemplary case in the history of classical receptions. There are three prominent reasons for this. Firstly, Sappho is associated with some of the earliest poetry in the classical tradition, which makes her reception history one of the longest we know of. Furthermore, Sappho’s poetry promotes ideologically challenging concepts such as female authority and homoeroticism, which have prompted very conspicuous interpretative strategies to deal with issues of gender and sexuality, revealing the values of the societies that have received her works through time. Finally, Sappho’s legacy has been very well explored from the perspective of reception studies: important investigations have been made into responses both to her as poet-figure and to her poetry from her earliest reception through to our own time. However, one of the few eras in Sappho’s longstanding reception history that has not been systematically explored before this volume is the Roman period. The omission is a paradox. Receptions of Sappho can be traced in more than eighteen Roman poets, among them many of the most central authors in the history of Latin literature. Surely, few other Greek poets can rival the impact of Sappho at Rome. This important fact calls out for a systematic approach to Sappho’s Roman reception, which is the aim of the present volume that focuses on the poetry of the central period of Roman literary history, from the time of Lucretius to that of Martial.Less
Sappho, a towering figure in Western culture, is an exemplary case in the history of classical receptions. There are three prominent reasons for this. Firstly, Sappho is associated with some of the earliest poetry in the classical tradition, which makes her reception history one of the longest we know of. Furthermore, Sappho’s poetry promotes ideologically challenging concepts such as female authority and homoeroticism, which have prompted very conspicuous interpretative strategies to deal with issues of gender and sexuality, revealing the values of the societies that have received her works through time. Finally, Sappho’s legacy has been very well explored from the perspective of reception studies: important investigations have been made into responses both to her as poet-figure and to her poetry from her earliest reception through to our own time. However, one of the few eras in Sappho’s longstanding reception history that has not been systematically explored before this volume is the Roman period. The omission is a paradox. Receptions of Sappho can be traced in more than eighteen Roman poets, among them many of the most central authors in the history of Latin literature. Surely, few other Greek poets can rival the impact of Sappho at Rome. This important fact calls out for a systematic approach to Sappho’s Roman reception, which is the aim of the present volume that focuses on the poetry of the central period of Roman literary history, from the time of Lucretius to that of Martial.
Felix Budelmann and Tom Phillips (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- April 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198805823
- eISBN:
- 9780191843723
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198805823.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Recent decades have seen a major expansion in our understanding of how early Greek lyric functioned in its social, political, and ritual contexts. The fundamental role song played in the day-to-day ...
More
Recent decades have seen a major expansion in our understanding of how early Greek lyric functioned in its social, political, and ritual contexts. The fundamental role song played in the day-to-day lives of communities, groups, and individuals has been the object of intense study. This volume places its focus elsewhere, and attempts to illuminate poetic effects that cannot be captured in functional terms. Employing a range of interpretative methods, it explores the idea of lyric performances as textual events. Several chapters investigate the pragmatic relationship between real performance contexts and imaginative settings. Others consider how lyric poems position themselves in relation to earlier texts and textual traditions, or discuss the distinctive encounters lyric poems create between listeners, authors, and performers. In addition to studies that analyse individual lyric texts and lyric authors (Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar), the volume includes treatments of the relationship between lyric and the Homeric Hymns. Building on the renewed concern with the aesthetic in the study of Greek lyric and beyond, Textual Events re-examines the relationship between the poems’ formal features and their historical contexts. Lyric poems are a type of sociopolitical discourse, but they are also objects of attention in themselves. They enable reflection on social and ritual practices as much as they are embedded within them. As well as enacting cultural norms, lyric challenges listeners to think about and experience the world afresh.Less
Recent decades have seen a major expansion in our understanding of how early Greek lyric functioned in its social, political, and ritual contexts. The fundamental role song played in the day-to-day lives of communities, groups, and individuals has been the object of intense study. This volume places its focus elsewhere, and attempts to illuminate poetic effects that cannot be captured in functional terms. Employing a range of interpretative methods, it explores the idea of lyric performances as textual events. Several chapters investigate the pragmatic relationship between real performance contexts and imaginative settings. Others consider how lyric poems position themselves in relation to earlier texts and textual traditions, or discuss the distinctive encounters lyric poems create between listeners, authors, and performers. In addition to studies that analyse individual lyric texts and lyric authors (Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar), the volume includes treatments of the relationship between lyric and the Homeric Hymns. Building on the renewed concern with the aesthetic in the study of Greek lyric and beyond, Textual Events re-examines the relationship between the poems’ formal features and their historical contexts. Lyric poems are a type of sociopolitical discourse, but they are also objects of attention in themselves. They enable reflection on social and ritual practices as much as they are embedded within them. As well as enacting cultural norms, lyric challenges listeners to think about and experience the world afresh.
Peter Green
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520255074
- eISBN:
- 9780520934719
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520255074.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Archaeology: Classical
A combination of scholarship and unorthodoxy makes these studies in ancient history and literature unusually rewarding. Few of the objects of conventional admiration gain much support from the ...
More
A combination of scholarship and unorthodoxy makes these studies in ancient history and literature unusually rewarding. Few of the objects of conventional admiration gain much support from the author—Pericles and the “democracy” of fifth-century Athens are treated to a very cool scrutiny—but he has a warm regard for the real virtues of antiquity and for those who spoke with “an individual voice.” The studies cover both history and literature, Greece and Rome. They range from the real nature of Athenian society to poets as diverse as Sappho and Juvenal, and all of them, without laboring any parallels, make the ancient world immediately relevant to our own. There is, for example, an essay on how classical history often becomes a vehicle for the historian's own political beliefs and fantasies of power.Less
A combination of scholarship and unorthodoxy makes these studies in ancient history and literature unusually rewarding. Few of the objects of conventional admiration gain much support from the author—Pericles and the “democracy” of fifth-century Athens are treated to a very cool scrutiny—but he has a warm regard for the real virtues of antiquity and for those who spoke with “an individual voice.” The studies cover both history and literature, Greece and Rome. They range from the real nature of Athenian society to poets as diverse as Sappho and Juvenal, and all of them, without laboring any parallels, make the ancient world immediately relevant to our own. There is, for example, an essay on how classical history often becomes a vehicle for the historian's own political beliefs and fantasies of power.
Elizabeth Marie Young
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226279916
- eISBN:
- 9780226280080
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226280080.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The sixth chapter offers a new reading of Catullus’s version of Sappho (Catullus 51) that shows this celebrated lyric translation to be orbiting the poles of fondness and aggression. It argues that ...
More
The sixth chapter offers a new reading of Catullus’s version of Sappho (Catullus 51) that shows this celebrated lyric translation to be orbiting the poles of fondness and aggression. It argues that the ambivalent passions outlined in the Latin version of Sappho’s erotic plaint voice the aggressive intimacy of Roman poetic translation itself. To translate, at Rome, was not to copy, but to engage in competition with a revered precursor as well as one’s peers. Catullus 51 refashions Sappho’s text into a metapoetic drama that stages the agonism and desire of Roman translation as a tale of jealousy and love. This translation allegory’s scene of thwarted desire between a Roman poet-lover named Catullus and a female beloved whose name, Lesbia, aligns her with the texts and territories of Greece also dramatized the emotional ambivalence of Roman hellenism more broadly.Less
The sixth chapter offers a new reading of Catullus’s version of Sappho (Catullus 51) that shows this celebrated lyric translation to be orbiting the poles of fondness and aggression. It argues that the ambivalent passions outlined in the Latin version of Sappho’s erotic plaint voice the aggressive intimacy of Roman poetic translation itself. To translate, at Rome, was not to copy, but to engage in competition with a revered precursor as well as one’s peers. Catullus 51 refashions Sappho’s text into a metapoetic drama that stages the agonism and desire of Roman translation as a tale of jealousy and love. This translation allegory’s scene of thwarted desire between a Roman poet-lover named Catullus and a female beloved whose name, Lesbia, aligns her with the texts and territories of Greece also dramatized the emotional ambivalence of Roman hellenism more broadly.
