Genre in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry: Theories and Models

Margaret Foster is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Indiana University. Her work focuses on archaic and classical Greek poetry and cultural history. She is the author of The Seer and the City: Religion, Politics, and Colonial Ideology in Ancient Greece (University of California Press, 2018).Leslie Kurke is Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on Greek literature and cultural history; her most recent book (co-authored with Richard Neer) is Pindar, Song, and Space: Towards a Lyric Archaeology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019).Naomi Weiss is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities in the Department of the Classics at Harvard University. She has published widely on ancient Greek theater and performance culture, and is the author of The Music of Tragedy: Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Theater (University of California Press, 2018).Contributors are: Seth Estrin, Andrew Ford, Margaret Foster, Mark Griffith, Gregory Nagy, Sarah Olsen, Timothy Power, Francesca Schironi, Deborah Steiner, Mario Telò, Naomi Weiss.

"This impressive volume comes from a conference held at the University of California, Berkeley in 2015, and provides several excellent discussions of different approaches to genre in early Greek poetry (essentially from Homer to Euripides). The authors for the most part share a sense that we need to move away from the notion that occasions uncomplicatedly produce genres: we should not seek in or behind archaic and classical Greek song a pre-lapsarian, pre-literary generic system. Most stress that ‘purity’ of genre should not be sought or invoked, but they provide a variety of ways to reconfigure how we think of genre and how attention to genre can help us to read particular texts." - Richard Rawles, University of Edinburgh, in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2020.10.26

• Preface and AcknowledgmentsNote on Abbreviations, Texts, and TranslationsList of Figures and TablesNotes on ContributorsIntroductionMargaret Foster, Leslie Kurke and Naomi WeissPart 1 Keynote Address1 Genre, Occasion, and Choral Mimesis Revisited, with Special Reference to the “Newest Sappho”Gregory NagyPart 2 Genre, Generification, and Performance2 Linus: The Rise and Fall of Lyric GenresAndrew Ford3 Sappho’s Parachoral MonodyTimothy Power4 The Speaking Persona: Ancient Commentators on Choral PerformanceFrancesca SchironiPart 3 Genre Mixing5 Chorus Lines: Catalogues and Choruses in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Hexameter Poetry and Choral LyricDeborah Steiner6 Generic Hybridity in Athenian TragedyNaomi Weiss7 Athens and Apolline Polyphony in Bacchylides’ Ode 16Margaret FosterPart 4 Affect, Materiality, and the Body: The Somatics of Genre8 Is Korybantic Performance a (Lyric) Genre?Mark Griffith9 Iambic Horror: Shivers and Brokenness in Archilochus and HipponaxMario Telò10 Experiencing Elegy: Materiality and Visuality in the Ambracian PolyandrionSeth Estrin11 Pindar, Paean 6: Genre as Embodied Cultural KnowledgeSarah OlsenBibliographyIndex LocorumGeneral Index