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The Problem of the Absent I

The Problem of the Absent I AbstractOne of the greatest paradoxes of ancient Greek lyric poetry is its fundamental tension between the vivid evocation of a performance communicative context and the capability of the text to transcend the context itself. A key aspect of this is the way in which language can exploit both poles of this tension: the presentness of the performance and the transcendence of the text. This is a source of crucial interpretative problems, as well as of complex expressive potentialities. The focus of this paper is to examine some of the ways in which the shift of the use of first person indexicals serves the dialogue between text and performance, proceeding through three stages. In the first place I briefly analyze some different genres of discourse (drama, epistle, lyric) that in Archaic and Classical Greek display a complex use of indexicality calling attention to the ‘mediated’ nature of the communication process (§ 2). In the second stage I revise some examples of ‘mediated’ indexicality in Greek lyric in general (§ 3) and in Pindaric poetry in particular (§ 4). In the third stage I locate these cases within a wider comparative approach, exploring a suitable theoretical explanation of this important feature (§ 5). http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Annali dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” Brill

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References (1)

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1128-7209
eISSN
1724-6172
DOI
10.1163/17246172-40010032
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractOne of the greatest paradoxes of ancient Greek lyric poetry is its fundamental tension between the vivid evocation of a performance communicative context and the capability of the text to transcend the context itself. A key aspect of this is the way in which language can exploit both poles of this tension: the presentness of the performance and the transcendence of the text. This is a source of crucial interpretative problems, as well as of complex expressive potentialities. The focus of this paper is to examine some of the ways in which the shift of the use of first person indexicals serves the dialogue between text and performance, proceeding through three stages. In the first place I briefly analyze some different genres of discourse (drama, epistle, lyric) that in Archaic and Classical Greek display a complex use of indexicality calling attention to the ‘mediated’ nature of the communication process (§ 2). In the second stage I revise some examples of ‘mediated’ indexicality in Greek lyric in general (§ 3) and in Pindaric poetry in particular (§ 4). In the third stage I locate these cases within a wider comparative approach, exploring a suitable theoretical explanation of this important feature (§ 5).

Journal

Annali dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”Brill

Published: Nov 12, 2020

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