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    An Aristotelian Critique of Homeric Comic Technique in The Iliad PDF

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    JornadaMentalidades

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if ‘unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g, maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA. 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY PROGRAM IN THE HUMANITIES AN ARISTOTELIAN CRITIQUE OF HOMERIC COMIC TECHNIQUE IN THE ILIAD By Richard Baldwin A Dissertation submitted to the Program in the Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: ‘Summer Semester 1997 Copyright © 1997 Richard Baldwin All Rights Reserved UMI Number: 9802187 Copyright 1997 by Baldwin, Richard Burton All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9802187 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road ‘Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ‘The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Richard Baldwin defended on April 25, 1997. 4 Leo Golden Professor Djfecting Dissertation Leon Golden Humanities Representative Dv NOs David Darst Outside Committee Member Tosepl Plescia Committee Member TABLE OF CONTENTS Praise of Homer unity of the Miad methods and approaches to the study of Homer the place of the Iliad in ancient Greek civilization the modem appreciation of the comic The Problem of Defining the Comic Nilsen Ekman Levine Modern Understanding of Homer's Poetic Devices Parry Arend Martin Thalman Mueller Suter Richardson Morrison DeJong Themes in the Miad the Trojan War as a cosmic event the limitations of human life death passion, both erotic emotion and suffering a celebration of life a sense of order in the universe Chapter Page 1, SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF THE COMIC... Problems with Defining the Comic supposed necessity of agreed upon standards iii supposed necessity of a world beyond the world of everyday existence seeming problem of the variety of purposes or functions of comedy misdirected attempts to explain laughter Historic Overview Plato Aristotle Cicero and Quintillian Hobbes and Kant Bergson Freud Munro's Summary of Categories of Comic Theories superiority incongruity relief inappropriate Problems with All the Theories Reconstruction of an Aristotelian Theory of Comedy the nature of comic characters the nature of comic action katharsis and the comic emotions: nemesan and tharsos 2. COMIC CHARACTER ONE: THEALAZON.. Defining the Alazon in the Aristotelian corpus Cornford’s prescriptive definition testing the definition in Aristophanes and Plautus: Socrates, Lamachus, Pyrgopolynices Thersites as the Homeric Forerunner of the Classic Alazon his classic baseness his conformity to the paradigm of alazoneia his status as the original miles gloriosus Absense of the Comic Spirit in the Thersites Scene the pain in the scene Nagy’s inclusion of this scene in the genre of blame poetry nemesan without tharsos Narrative and Thematic Unity of Iliad 2 120 3. COMIC CHARACTER TWO: THE EIRON.. Paris in the Iliad iv three problems associated with the character of Paris theories concerning the double name of Alexandros/Paris Defining the Eiron in the Aristotelian corpus Cornford’s prescriptive definition testing the paradigm in Aristophanes: Demos, Lysistrata, Dicaeopolis Paris’ conformity to the paradigm of eironeia Analysis of the Paris Scenes book 3: its comicality; its narrative and thematic unity book 6: its comicality; its narrative and themactic unity Why Odysseus was not chosen as the model for eironeia Mladic material on Odysseus lacking in eironeia not a phaulos character in the Iliad the lack of comic action in the Iliadic scenes the Odysseus of the Odyssey as the source of Odysseus’ trickster fame 4, COMIC CHARACTER THREE: THE BOMOLOCHOS. 238 Defining the bomolochos in the Aristotelian corpus Comford’s prescriptive definition testing the paradigm in Aristophanes: Xanthias, Demosthenes, Strepsiades Hephaestus as a Forerunner of the Classic Bomolochos the comicality of the Hephaestus scene in book 1 Hephaestus’ conformity to the paradigm of bomolocheia the narrative and thematic unity of the Hephaestus scene? The Historic Constemation over Comedy and the Olympians nature of the Greek religion the gods and the poets the gods and the philosophers the conflict between poetry and philosophy Zeus as another Forerunner of the Classic Bomolochos the comicality of the Aid dxdiry Zeus’ conformity to the paradigm of bomolochia the narrative and thematic unity of the Ag cerdéry Homer's fuller development of the bomolochos in the Odyssey Thersites and Dolon as primarily alazones Iros’ conformity to the paradigm of bomolochia CONCLUSION. 294 BIBLIOGRAPHY... 297 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. .. 319 vi INTRODUCTION The journey which led to this dissertation was guided by the curiously frequent number of comic incidents I encountered on a close reading of the Iliad. I soon became convinced that Aristotle was correct when he stated that Homer “first traced out the form of comedy" in Poetics 1448 b 36-7.! As I encountered a broad field of opinions about the comic passages in the Iliad, I realized the importance of assembling a set of hermeneutic principles that I could accept as valid tools to use to interpret the Iliad in general and those comic passages in particular. In the last century the critics were divided into those who saw the epic as a patchwork of earlier songs sown together over centuries (thereby making it easy to regard To be sure, Aristotle was referring to the Margites, not the Iliad and the Odyssey; however, according to M. Heath, "Aristotelian Comedy," Classical Quarterly 39 (1989), “Aristotle goes on to claim the Margites shares with the Iliad and Odyssey the qualities which made them exceptional even among heroic poems: both anticipate the much later emergence of drama in their narrative technique" (347). G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Cambridge, MA, 1979), remarks, "Although Homeric Epos is not intrinsically suited for the comic element, Aristotle does find an attested poetic form, within the Homeric tradition, that has a function parallel to that of comedy. ‘The form in question is represented by the Homeric Margites . . ." (259). In a footnote Nagy explains "I note again—as I have done throughout—that in matters of archaic Greek poetry our concem should be more with questions of poetic tradition than with questions of poetic authorship" (footnote 9n1, 259). No doubt Aristotle was able to accept the Homeric authorship of the Margites because he recognized the comic talents of Homer in the many non-heroic and comic scenes in the Iliad and the Odyssey. 2 humorous passages in the epics as interpolations) versus those who saw the poem as a unified whole. I was delighted to discover that I would not be burdened with this now obsolete polarization of criticism into “analytical” and “unitarian" schools of thought that began in the modern era with Friedrich August Wolf's famous work, Prolegomena, Volumen I, published in 1795.? For as I read the fextus receptus of the Iliad, I could not help but intuit a single hand involved in this impressive poem, no matter what number of hands had contributed this or that over what number of centuries before and after this single genius.’ Through my investigation I discovered that, "Not a trace of proof has ever been found that during the classical period anyone questioned the unity of the Iliad and the Odyssey or that they were both the work of one poet, and that poet, Homer." In fact, there are no arguments by either Greek or Latin writers to show that Homer was not the creator of both epics. Therefore I welcomed the fact that, “Most scholars now accept that the Homeric epics are the result of a developing oral epic tradition on the one hand, the unifying and creative work of an exceptional monumental °J. A. Scott, The Unity of Homer (Berkeley, 1921), 41. >As Bowra in R. P. Draper, ed., The Epic: Developments in Criticism, A Casebook (Basingstoke, 1990) remarks: *...the Iliad is a single poem with a single plan and a remarkably consistent use of language” (123). “Tbid., 39. SScott, Unity of Homer, points out, “Except for the utterly vain and ineffectual paradoxical reasoning of Xenon and Hellanicus we hear of no arguments by either Greek or Latin writers to show that Homer was not the creator of both the Iliad and the Odyssey” (41). 3 composer on the other."* Included among these scholars is Richard Janko who set out to prove multiple authorship: “Inspired by the late Sir Denys Page, I first began to investigate the diction of the Homeric poems in order to prove that they result from multiple authorship, but reached the opposite conclusion: that the Miad and Odyssey were taken down by dictation, much as we have them, from the lips of a single eighth-century singer."” Though differing from Janko in some of the details, Kirk reports that the belief in the early composition of the Homeric epics is supported on several fronts: 4G. $. Kirk, The liad: A Commentary, ed. G. S. Kirk, vol. 1 (1985; reprint, Cambridge, 1993), xv. Cf. N. Richardson, The Iliad: A Commentary, ed. G. S. Kirk. Vol. 6 (Cambridge, 1993), 1. As Richardson summarizes, "I admit without hesitation to being entirely convinced by the unitarians that, with the exception of occasional brief interpolations, each poem is the product of a single poet's creative endeavor within the poetic tradition rather than a redacted compilation of several narratives" (6). W. G. Thalmann, Conventions of Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry (Baltimore, 1984), concludes concerning the integrity of the Homeric poems: "I believe that each poem was shaped by a single artist according to a coherent design” (xviii). Note that, despite the prevailing conviction of the unity of our text, R. Janko, The Iliad: A Commentary, ed. G. S. Kirk, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 1992), must proclaim such confidence with a caveat: *. . . the origin of our text and the nature of Alexandrian scholarship are still obscure and hotly debated topics" (2). Yanko, The iad: A Commentary, vol. 4, xi. He later informs us: “All our MSS somehow go back to a single origin, and have passed through a single channel; it is improbable that more than one ‘original’ of the Iliad ever existed, even if different rthapsodic performances and editorial interventions have led to the addition or (rarely) omissions of verses here and there. . . . linguistic data prove that the text acquired fixed form well before Hesiod’ time; if the Iliad was first written down later, we must accept a long intervening period of reasonably accurate memorized transmissions, which I find unlikely” (29). That the Iliad and Odyssey were widely known by the middle of the seventh century B.C., if not earlier, is supported by other considerations: mainly the quotations and echoes in surviving poetry of that time (in Archilochus, Aleman, Callinus and Tyrtaeus especially), but also a couplet referring to Nestor’s cup of Il. 11.632{ff. which was inscribed around 725 B.C. on a cup excavated in Ischia in 1954. This is confirmed by the appearance of heroic scenes as decorations on vases from around 735 B.C. onward. . . . There can be no serious doubt that both Hiad and Odyssey were quite well known, not only in Ionia but, also on the mainland, by 650 B.C. The increase from around 700 in cults of epic heroes and heroines, like those of Agamemnon at Mukenae and Menelaos and Helen at Sparta, points in the same direction.* We are aware that our text became the standard by about the middle of the second century B.C. and is essentially the same as the texts of Roman and medieval times. “Before this time, as ancient scholars attest and surviving papyri prove, there were a number of different texts, differing from each other often in a word or two and "Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 1, 4. 5 sometimes in a sequence of three or more verses."? Janko submits that the Homeric epics could not have been Liable to free oral transmission until they were fixed a hundred or more years later; instead “it is clear that the texts were fixed before the time of Hesiod, and it is difficult to refuse the conclusion that the texts were fixed at the time when each was composed, whether by rote memorisation or by oral dictated texts."!° In his 1991 presidential address to the annual meeting of the American Philological Association,"' Gregory Nagy argued that it was unnecessary to assume the use of writing to account for the early fixity of the text. In fact, he insisted that "there is no evidence for assuming that the Iliad and Odyssey, as compositions, resulted from the writing down of a text" (42). Instead Nagy proposed an “evolutionary model of °M. W. Edwards, Homer: Poet of the liad, (Baltimore, 1987), 23. Edwards further maintains that "There is no hint whatever of versions of the Iliad or Odyssey widely

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