Description
Book SynopsisExplores the notoriously difficult ancient Greek poetry of Aeschylus and Pindar and seeks to articulate the complex relationship between them. Previous scholarship has often treated Pindar and Aeschylus as representatives of contrasting worldviews. This comparative study offers the alternative perspective of understanding them as complements.
Trade Review“This book is persuasive, engaging, and thought-provoking. Park’s arguments and interpretations are compelling . . . I very much hope the book will generate conversation and further engagement with the issues it raises and will lead to more classicists looking at Pindar and Aeschylus side by side.”—Louise Pratt, Emory University
“This study is unique both in its thematic breadth and in its generic scope. It offers new insights into the construction of gender in Greek literature by exploring in detail how gender informs the performance and the perception of truth and lies in epinician and tragedy. It also advances our epinician poetics by examining the intersection of truth and reciprocity between poet and patron, but also by exposing Pindar’s treatment of female desire and seduction as inherently threatening to male-dominated reciprocal relationships.”—Zoe Stamatopoulou, Washington University in St. Louis
Table of Contents
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- PROLOGUE: CONTEXTS FOR COMPLEMENTARITY
- The Structure of the Book
- CHAPTER ONE: RECIPROCITY AND TRUTH IN PINDAR AND AESCHYLUS
- Reciprocity
- Reciprocity and Truth in Pindaric Epinician
- Poetry and Reciprocity in Pindar
- Alētheia and Poetic Reciprocity
- Truth Personified: Fragment 205 and Olympian 10
- Reciprocity, Revenge, and Truth in Aeschylus
- The Language of Reciprocity in Aeschylus
- Reciprocity and Truth? The Danaids’ Ode to Zeus
- Truth as “What Happens”
- Truth in Untruth: Clytemnestra
- The Truth of Reciprocity
- Conclusion
- CHAPTER TWO: THE TRUTH OF RECIPROCITY IN PINDAR’S MYTHS
Olympian 10: Truth, Obligation, and Reciprocity
- Truth, Praise, and Poetic Obligation in Olympian 1
- Parity, Reality, and Poetry: Nemean 7
- Conclusion
- CHAPTER THREE: GENDER, RECIPROCITY, AND TRUTH IN PINDAR
- The Significance of Gender
- The Hera-Cloud of Pythian 2
- The Active-Passive Paradox: Feminizing Male Deception
- The Hera-Cloud’s Ancestors and Epinician Poetry
- Coronis in Pythian 3: Alētheia, Myth, And Poetry
- Coronis and Poetry
- Hippolyta in Nemean 5: Seduction, Deception, Poetry
- Male Seduction
- Aegisthus and Clytemnestra in Pythian 11
- Jason and Medea in Pythian 4
- Conclusion
- CHAPTER FOUR: WOMEN KNOW BEST: AESCHYLUS’ SEVEN AGAINST THEBES
- Eteocles’ Attempt at Narrative Control
- The Chorus’ Messengers
- Etumos and Alēthēs
- Sight, Sound, and Interpretation
- Danaus as Comparison
- The Shields: Partial Visions And Truths
- Tydeus
- Capaneus and Eteoclus
- Hippomedon and Parthenopaeus
- Amphiaraus
- Polyneices: Symmetry and Repetition
- The Chorus and the Continuity of Reciprocity
- Alēthēs
- Conclusion
- CHAPTER FIVE: FEMALE AUTHORSHIP: FORGING TRUTH IN AESCHYLUS’ SUPPLIANTS
- Truth and Time
- Truth and Dikē
- The Danaids as Autobiographers
- The Danaids and Pelasgus: Forging Collaboration
- The Limits of Female Narrative Control
- Conclusion
- CHAPTER SIX: TRUTH, GENDER, AND REVENGE IN AESCHYLUS’ ORESTEIA
- Clytemnestra and the Herald: Different Sources of Truth
- Gendered Truths: Etumos and Alēthēs
- Cassandra: Truth in Prophecy
- Cassandra as Mirror: Time, Truth, Reciprocity
- Female Truth and Tragedy
- Aegisthus: Revenge without Truth
- The Evolution of Reciprocity and Truth in Choephori and Eumenides
- Conclusion
- EPILOGUE
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
