An Introduction

Giulio Colesanti, Manuela Giordano, Giulio Colesanti, Manuela Giordano

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9783110390209
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume deals with the submerged literature of ancient Greece; that is, all the texts produced for socially relevant events that have contributed to the configuration and articulation of ancient Greek culture as we know it. In particular, the hermeneutic tool of submerged literature may shed new light on the dynamics behind the 'emersion' or 'submersion' of certain texts during different periods. The category of submerged literature is extended here to include preserved and lost texts as well as those texts that can be reconstructed through investigation. The volume investigates the manifold speech acts that we know of through various sources and that, either from the outset or over the course of time, have been placed at the edge of diffusion, conservation and transmission. The essays contained in the volume deal with questions of hermeneutics, philology and methodology, as well as with epic cycles, lyric poetry, tragedy, comedy, satyr drama, and mime. By approaching these genres from the perspective of submerged literature, the book tries to provide a more precise contextualization of the texts within the communication system of ancient Greece. The book thus presents a new line of research and a series of studies that take a fresh look at the texts and all archaeological and iconographic sources relating to Greek culture, taking into account the results of ethnographic and anthropological research. This extensive investigation examines unique ancient Greek orality and literacy dynamics using a new hermeneutic frame that will hopefully reshape our understanding of ancient Greek culture.

Contributors

Maria Broggiato is Associate Professor of Classical philology at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. Her main areas of interest are ancient Greek literature and thought in the Hellenistic age. She published the first modern collection of the fragments of Crates of Mallos (2001); a monograph on philology and interpretation in Pergamum is currently in print.

‘Sapienza’ Università di Roma
Dipartimento di Scienze dell’antichità
Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, I-00185 Roma (RM)
e-mail: [email protected]

Giulio Colesanti teaches Italian and Latin literature at a secondary school in Rome. He has written several contributions on early Greek lyric poetry and on the Greek symposium. He contributed to the handbook Storia e testi della Letteratura greca by L. E. Rossi and R. Nicolai (3 vols, 2002–2003), and published Questioni teognidee. La genesi simposiale di un corpus di elegie (2011).

Via Capitan Bavastro 62, I-00154 Roma (RM)
e-mail: [email protected]

Andrea Ercolani is Research Fellow at the Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo Antico (ISMA) of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). He has published several essays on ancient Greek literature (on lyric poetry, tragedy, comedy, and the archaic epic). His most recent works are the monograph Omero. Introduzione allo studio dell’epica greca arcaica (2006) and the edition, with commentary, of Hesiod’s Works and Days (2010).

Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo Antico (ISMA) del CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), Area della Ricerca di Roma 1

Via Salaria km 29.300, I-00015 Monterotondo Stazione (Roma)

e-mail: [email protected]

Manuela Giordano is Research Fellow and Lecturer of ancient Greek literature at the University of Calabria. She has published a number of essays and monographs on Homer, tragedy, historical-anthropological questions, (La supplica. Rituale, istituzione sociale e tema epico in Omero, 1999; La parola efficace, 1999), and a commentary on the first book of the Iliad (2010). She is currently writing a book on civic tragedy.

Università degli Studi della Calabria
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
87036 Arcavacata di Rende (CS)
e-mail: [email protected]

Laura Lulli is Temporary Lecturer of ancient Greek literature at the University of L’Aquila. She has published contributions on the Greek epic and lyric poetry, and the monograph Narrare in distici. L’elegia greca arcaica e classica di argomento storico-mitico (2011).

Università degli Studi dell’Aquila
Dipartimento di Scienze umane
Viale Nizza, 14, I-67100 L’Aquila (AQ)
e-mail: [email protected]

Michele Napolitano is Associate Professor of ancient Greek literature at the University of Cassino. His main areas of interest are ancient comedy and satyr drama, the archaic and late-archaic lyric poetry, studies on metre and music. He published editions, with commentary, of Euripides’ The Cyclops (2003) and of Eupolis’ Kolakes (2012). He is co-editor of the journal Seminari Romani di cultura greca.

Università degli Studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale
Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia

Via Zamosch s.n.c., I-03043 Cassino (FR)

e-mail: [email protected]

Roberto Nicolai is Full Professor of ancient Greek literature at the University of Rome ‘Sapienza’. He has published several contributions on ancient Greek poetry and on ancient Greek historical and geographical works. He contributed to the Letteratura greca by L. E. Rossi (1995), and is a member of the editorial board of the Enciclopedia oraziana. He edited an Italian translation of Polybius (1998), and published La storiografia nell’educazione antica (1992) and Studi su Isocrate (2004), and with. L. E. Rossi the handbook Storia e testi della Letteratura greca Nicolai (3 vols, 2002–2003). He is editor of the journal Seminari Romani di cultura greca.

‘Sapienza’ Università di Roma
Dipartimento di Scienze dell’antichità
Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, I-00185 Roma (RM)
e-mail: [email protected]

Riccardo Palmisciano is Research Fellow and Lecturer of ancient Greek literature at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’. He has published essays on Homer, lyric poetry, early dramatic performances, traditional poetry and its relationship with authorial poetry; the latter topic is the subject of a monograph on poetic and traditional dirges in archaic Greek culture (in print). He edited, with Matteo D’Acunto, the proceedings of the Conference Lo Scudo di Achille nell’Iliade. Esperienze ermeneutiche a confronto (2010).

Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’
Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo

P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore 12, I-80134 Napoli (NA)
e-mail: [email protected]

Livio Sbardella is Associate Professor of ancient Greek literature at the University of L’Aquila. His main areas of interest are the development of the ancient Greek poetic tradition, with particular emphasis on the archaic and Hellenistic ages, and communication and oral cultures in the ancient and modern world. He published the monographs Filita. Testimonianze e frammenti poetici (2000, edition with commentary), Oralità. Da Omero ai mass media (2006), Cucitori di canti. Studi sulla tradizione epico-rapsodica greca e i suoi itinerari nel VI secolo a. C. (2012). He is co-editor of the journal Seminari Romani di cultura greca.

Università degli Studi dell’Aquila
Dipartimento di Scienze umane
Viale Nizza 14, I-00167 L’Aquila (AQ)
e-mail: [email protected]

Maurizio Sonnino is Research Fellow and Lecturer of ancient Greek literature at the University of Roma ‘Sapienza’. He has published several essays on Greek comedy and tragedy, and has recently edited the monograph Euripidis Erechthei quae exstant (2010). He is going to edit the editio princeps of a 18th cent. manuscript containing the most ancient Italian translation with commentary of four comedies of Aristophanes.

‘Sapienza’ Università di Roma
Dipartimento di Scienze dell’antichità
Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, I-00185 Roma (RM)
e-mail: [email protected]

1
Rossi 2000. On L. E. Rossi as historian of Greek literature see Nicolai 2013.

2
‘Fare una recensio della letteratura greca mai emersa a livello editoriale (termine improprio per tutto quello che precede il IV sec. a.C.: sarebbe meglio dire ‘a livello di diffusione policentrica’). Tale letteratura non era stata protetta dalla polis o da una qualsiasi autorità – per così dire – istituzionale dal punto di vista letterario. ‘

3
See Ercolani in this volume.

4
Namely, Roberto Nicolai, who has succeded Rossi on his chair, Maria Broggiato, Giulio Colesanti, Andrea Ercolani, Manuela Giordano, Laura Lulli, Michele Napolitano, Riccardo Palmisciano, Livio Sbardella, Maurizio Sonnino.

5
The seminars and the research have been sponsored and promoted by the following academic institutions: ‘Sapienza’ University of Rome, CNR – Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo Antico, University of L’Aquila, University of Calabria, University of Cassino and Southern Latium, University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, University of Tuscia, which we wish to thank for their support.

6
See Morgan 1998, 90 f., Easterling 2002, 21. On the definition of an independent literary domain see Finkelberg 1998, Ford 2002, and Nicolai forthcoming.

7
See Ercolani in this volume.

8
Rossi 2000, 170: ‘Con letteratura ‘sommersa’ io intendo […] testi maltrattati fin dal primissimo inizio della trasmissione, o anche testi che non hanno avuto alcuna trasmissione affatto. Questi testi non hanno goduto di alcun controllo e di alcuna protezione sia perché le varie comunità non avevano alcun interesse a conservarli sia perché avevano, piuttosto, interesse a nasconderli o addirittura a sopprimerli: quest’ultima categoria è rappresentata da quanto era legato ai misteri. Ma molti di questi testi, che dal nostro punto di osservazion...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introductory Notes
• Defining the Indefinable: Greek Submerged Literature and Some Problems of Terminology
• Submerged Literature in an Oral Culture
• The Canon and Its Boundaries
• Beyond the Canon: Hellenistic Scholars and Their Texts
• The Trojan War Myth: Rhapsodic Canon and Lyric Alternatives
• Local Epics and Epic Cycles: the Anomalous Case of a Submerged Genre
• Two Cases of Submerged Monodic Lyric: Sympotic Poetry and Lullabies
• Dramatic Actions from Archaic Iconographic Sources: the Domain of the Satyrikon
• Comedy outside the Canon: from Ritual Slapstick to Hellenistic Mime
• Out of Athens. Ritual Performances, Spaces, and the Emergence of Tragedy
• By Way of Conclusion
• Reference List
• Index Nominum
• Index Rerum Notabilium
• Index Locorum
• Contributors