Poet Public and Performance in Ancient Greece

Poetry in archaic and classical Greece was a practical art that arose from specific social or political circumstances. The interpretation of a poem or dramatic work must therefore be viewed in the context of its performance. In Poetry Public and Performance in Ancient Greece Lowell Edmunds and Robert W. Wallace bring together a distinguished group of contributors to reconstruct the performance context of a wide array of works including epic tragedy lyric elegy and proverb. Analyzing the passage in the Odyssey in which a collective delirium comes over the suitors Giulio Guidorizzi reveals how the poet describes a scene that lies outside the narrative themes and diction of epic. Antonio Aloni offers a reading of Simonides'' elegy for the Greeks who fell at Plataea. Lowell Edmunds interprets the so-called seal of Theognis as lying on a borderline between the performed and the textual. Taking up proverbs maxims and apothegms Joseph Russo examines the performance of wisdom. Charles Segal focuses on the unusual role played by the chorus in Euripides'' Bacchae. Reading the plot of Euripides'' Ion Thomas Cole concludes that the task of constructing the meaning of the play is to some extent delegated to the public. Robert Wallace describes the performance of the Athenian audience and provides a catalog of good and bad behavior: whistling shouting and throwing objects of every kind. Finally Maria Grazia Bonanno stresses the importance of performance in lyric poetry.