Volume 3, Issue 2

Both leading trends in contemporary Homeric scholarship, Neoanalysis and Oral Theory, recognize today that the Iliad and the Odyssey frequently evoke episodes whose proper place is in the poems of the Epic Cycle. Yet, while in the Neoanalysts' eyes the intertextual relations between Homer and the Cycle mean that Homer enjoyed a special status which was due to the fact that his poems were composed with the help of writing, from the standpoint of oral formulaic theory Homer and the Cycle should nevertheless be placed on the same plane as independent variants of a common tradition. The article's main argument is that, contrary to the oralists' opinion, the position of the Homeric poems in Greek epic tradition was indeed unique. Contrary to the Neoanalysts' opinion, it is of little relevance whether it was in oral or in written form that they attained this position.

The aim of this study is to offer a critical reassessment of the progress made in recent years with respect to two of the most fruitful schools of interpretation in Homeric research, i.e. Neoanalysis and Oral Theory. After revisiting a series of theoretical issues, the author presents his personal viewpoint concerning the much-debated question concerning symptomatic or derivative innovation.

A number of different readings and supplements proposed for Sappho's fr. 27 V. clarify the circumstances in which the song was written. Collaterally, a striking parallel is observed between a Sappho verse and a passage of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (4). The similarity suggests a dating of the composition of the Hymn in the early sixth century. The same dating is suggested by Alcaeus' fr. 308 Lib. (‘Hymn to Hermes’), the invocation formulas of which, without being so typical and conventional as was believed so far, are identical to those of the Homeric Hymn.

Irony is thought of as a subversive rhetorical strategy that accounts for the collapse of lengthy narratives. In this paper I examine the way irony conduces to the evolution of archaic Greek lyricism against the backdrop of epic. I argue that Bacchylides 17 displays a distinct narrative tension arising from the clash of the two main branches of the epic tradition, male heroic epic and female catalogue or ehoie -poetry. Bacchylides positions Minos and Theseus, the main characters, within this narrative tension and has them employ irony to establish their ties with respective genres of epic narrative. The predilection of matronymic language by Theseus and the insistence on patronymic language by Minos turn a genealogical conflict into a debate over the reception of the epic genres. The emphasis Theseus puts on maternal filiation alongside the underwater encounter with his stepmother Amphitrite constitutes a marked way of countermining the traditional norms of male heroic epic such as anger, violence and paternity. By setting itself in line with the agenda of female catalogue poetry, which highlights eroticism, marriage and maternity, the poem cross-fertilises selected traits of an epic legacy it chooses to host in a brand new generic environment.

The outline of my metatheatrical reading is grounded on the emotional contact that Euripides' poetics assumes between the character who offers herself to death and the spectators' pain for this offering. As they view the actual death of Alcestis, fully performed on the stage, the spectators undergo the experience of what means to die, and in their imagination are ready to enter into Hades with Alcestis. Through this experience they prepare themselves for their own death, and they offer themselves to its inevitability. This pain and preparation will make them wiser and produce also a purgation, or what we would call an aesthetic pleasure, symbolized by the late return of Alcestis to light. Since Admetus is not prepared, and is not wise, he tries non philosophical and non poetic ways of facing Alcestis' death, until, in despair, he falls into a sort of suicidal mood. The richness of this masterpiece explodes through the metatheatrical reading.

As a famous story has it, the various ingenious solutions Greek mathematicians put forth in the fourth century BC to the problem of cube-duplication had been ultimately motivated by a Delphic oracle the inhabitants of the island Delos had received and its interpretation by Plato. Scholars have argued that this story must be a biographical fiction, for some of its elements can be shown to have arisen from passages in Plato's own works, but others continue to defend its historical plausibility. All of its elements, however, including the crucial relation between Apollo and mathematics, as well as the equally crucial role of his oracles in the progress of mathematics in Greece, can be convincingly traced back to a number of passages in the Platonic corpus. A key detail in the story, moreover, cannot be backed by archaeological evidence that, if available, could render the delivery of the supposed Delphic oracle to the Delians in principle possible. Thus we must conclude that the story is a biographical anecdote that (re)constructs an episode in Plato's life from the Platonic corpus.

This article analyzes the Senecan background to Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love by focusing upon both playwrights' predilections for graphic violence and sexual content. Kane's version of the Phaedra story presents sex, death and mutilation as acts that often defy meaning – these phenomena have such a strong experiential impact that they are slow to move into the referential realm of sign and symbol. By placing these acts centre stage, Kane also implicates the audience. Of course, we cannot propose the same performance effects for Senecan tragedy, owing to lack of evidence. Nonetheless Seneca's work, like Kane's, plays upon dramaturgic techniques of showing and telling: Phaedra's passion is nefas , simultaneously immoral and something she physically cannot speak. Death is also meaningless in Seneca: the final scene shows Theseus trying and failing to make sense of his son's torn body. Both Seneca and Sarah Kane push the boundaries between theatrical illusion and visual reality and, in the process, comment on the nature of theatre itself.