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 COGNITIVE CLASSICS

General Editors
   
 COGNITIVE CLASSICS

Cognition is fundamental to knowledge, being, and action. For classicists, a focus on

cognition in all its forms re-orientates the study of texts, beliefs, values, artefacts,
environments, and practices; in turn, Greco-Roman antiquity offers material that
variously supports, extends, and challenges current thinking about the mind. Cognitive
Classics promotes interaction between classical scholarship and the range of cognitive
studies, from psychology and neuroscience to linguistics and philosophy.
Experience, Narrative,
and Criticism in
Ancient Greece
Under the Spell of Stories
Edited by
JONAS GRETHLEIN, LUUK HUITINK,
and A L D O T A G L I A B U E

1
 3
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 Preface

This volume is a product of the ERC research group ‘Experience and Teleology in
Ancient Narrative’ (ERC Grant Agreement No. 312321), hosted by Heidelberg
University from 2013 to 2018. Its members, Annika Domainko, Jonas Grethlein,
Luuk Huitink, Jakob Lenz, and Aldo Tagliabue, pursued new approaches to
ancient narrative beyond the avenues paved by structuralist narratology. As
many illuminating studies show, the taxonomies of Bal, Genette, and others
provide very useful tools for the analysis of ancient literature. At the same time,
they are arguably less suitable for capturing phenomenal and experiential aspects
of reading or listening to narratives. And this is a real drawback in the case of
ancient literature; as several chapters in this volume argue, ancient critics (and, we
suppose, authors and readers) valued such aspects of narrative highly. The
Heidelberg ERC group identified cognitive studies, together with phenomenology
and linguistics, as opening up a promising road to a more comprehensive under-
standing of narrative and its functioning in antiquity.
In March 2015, the group hosted a workshop on ‘Classical Literature and
Cognitive Studies’ in the beautiful surroundings of Kloster Schöntal in Baden-
Württemberg, inviting two pioneers of the current wave of ‘second-generation’
cognitive criticism, Karin Kukkonen and Emily Troscianko. Our discussions on
theoretical issues and a communal close reading of ancient and modern texts
(Homer, Thucydides, Hilary Mantel) proved fruitful for both sides, and was
seminal for the direction of the work of the group. In June that year, an equally
stimulating conference on ‘Narrative and Experience in Greco-Roman Antiquity’
took place at Heidelberg; Annika Domainko deserves especial thanks for taking on
the lion’s share of the practical organization of the event. Eight of the papers
delivered at the conference form the bedrock of this volume, while five more were
solicited to increase its scope. While this volume is one of the final products of the
Heidelberg ERC group, we hope that its triangulation of ancient narrative, ancient
criticism, and cognitive approaches will be no more than a starting point for
further explorations of ancient texts from various perspectives.
We are delighted to see this volume appear as the first instalment of OUP’s new
book series, ‘Cognitive Classics’, and we wish to thank both series editors, Felix
Budelmann and Ineke Sluiter, for their interest and encouragement. We are also
indebted to two anonymous readers for their incisive and helpful comments. We
are very grateful to Charlotte Loveridge for unhesitatingly taking the project under
vi 

her wing, to Georgina Leighton for overseeing all the stages of the book’s production
with care, and to Donald Watt for his wonderfully rigorous copy-editing.
At Heidelberg, Sabine Hug’s help was once more indispensable in bringing the
manuscript into a form we could submit; Patrick Baumann expertly compiled
the bibliography. Finally, Jakob Staude and Angela Terzani Staude deserve thanks
for generously giving permission to use one of the marvelous paintings of their
father, Hans Joachim Staude, for the cover of this volume. Since we first encoun-
tered ‘Germaine, Vasco and Felice’, it has not stopped intriguing us as it visually
captures some of the intricacies of the responses to literature which our volume sets
out to explore.
Jonas Grethlein, Heidelberg
Luuk Huitink, Leiden
Aldo Tagliabue, Notre Dame
 List of Illustrations

1.1 The reader’s experience of immersion in the storyworld 20

3.1 Hippolytus’ fatal accident. The figure bottom left is often interpreted as the
messenger. Apulian krater, attributed to the Darius Painter, c.340s ;
London BM GAA4981 63
3.2 A Medea tableau, with a white-haired messenger figure on the left.
Apulian volute krater, attributed to the Underworld Painter, c.320 ;
Munich Staatliche Antikensammlungen 329685102 65
3.3 The old man from Corinth reveals the truth to Jocasta and Oedipus.
Krater attributed to the Gibil Gabib Group, c.330s ; Syracuse 66557
(Polo Regionale di Siracusa per i siti e i musei archeologici Museo
Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi) 66
11.1 Campanian neck amphora, attributed to the Caivano Painter, c.340 ;
Getty Museum 92.AE.86 248
11.2 Red-figure cup from Vulci, attributed to the Eucharides Painter, c.490 ;
Louvre G136 249
12.1 Aphrodite of Knidos (plaster cast in the Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer
Bildwerke München) 256
12.2 Replica of the so-called Pothos of Skopas, from the house under the
Via Cavour; Rome, Palazzo dei Conservatori 2417 261
12.3 Replica of the so-called Pothos of Skopas, from the house under the
Via Cavour; Rome, Palazzo dei Conservatori 2416 262
12.4 Reconstructed view (house under the Via Cavour) with the replicas
of the Pothos 263
12.5 Roman replica of the Hanging Marsyas; Karlsruhe, Badisches
Landesmuseum B 2301 266
12.6 Roman replica of the Scythian from the Hanging Marsyas Group;
Florence, Uffizi 230 267
12.7 Replica of a fighting Gaul from the Little Barbarians (plaster cast in the
Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke München); Paris,
Louvre Ma 324 269
12.8 Drawing of the (restored) replicas of the Little Barbarians 270
12.9 Replica of the Pan Daphnis Group; Naples, Museo Nazionale 6329 273
12.10 Replica of the Daphnis without Pan; Berlin, Antikensammlung Sk 231 275
12.11 Replica of the Pan without Daphnis; Louvre Ma 266 276
 List of Contributors

Rutger J. Allan is a Lecturer in Greek Language and Literature at the Free University
Amsterdam.

Evert van Emde Boas is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford.

Felix Budelmann is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Oxford.
Casper C. de Jonge is Associate Professor of Greek Language and Literature at Leiden
University.
Nikolaus Dietrich is Professor of Classical Archaeology at Heidelberg University.

David Fearn is Reader in Greek Literature at the University of Warwick.

Laura Gianvittorio Ungar is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Classics at the University of
Vienna.
Jonas Grethlein is Chair in Greek Literature at Heidelberg University.
Lisa Irene Hau is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Glasgow.

Luuk Huitink is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Classics at Leiden University.

Anastasia Erasmia Peponi is Professor of Classics at Stanford University.
Alex Purves is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Aldo Tagliabue is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Notre Dame.

Alessandro Vatri is a Departmental Lecturer in Classical Philology at the University of
Oxford.
 Introduction
Narrative and Aesthetic Experience in Ancient Greece
Jonas Grethlein, Luuk Huitink, and Aldo Tagliabue

1. The Tears of Odysseus

When Demodocus sings about the wooden horse in the Odyssey, Odysseus’
response is famously described by means of a graphic simile:

ταῦτ’ ἄρ’ ἀοιδὸς ἄειδε περικλυτός αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς

τήκετο, δάκρυ δ’ ἔδευεν ὑπὸ βλεφάροισι παρειάς.
ὡς δὲ γυνὴ κλαίῃσι φίλον πόσιν ἀμφιπεσοῦσα,
ὅς τε ἑῆς πρόσθεν πόλιος λαῶν τε πέσῃσιν,
ἄστεϊ καὶ τεκέεσσιν ἀμύνων νηλεὲς ἦμαρ
ἡ μὲν τὸν θνῄσκοντα καὶ ἀσπαίροντα ἰδοῦσα
ἀμφ’ αὐτῷ χυμένη λίγα κωκύει οἱ δέ τ’ ὄπισθε
κόπτοντες δούρεσσι μετάφρενον ἠδὲ καὶ ὤμους
εἴρερον εἰσανάγουσι, πόνον τ’ ἐχέμεν καὶ ὀϊζύν
τῆς δ’ ἐλεεινοτάτῳ ἄχεϊ φθινύθουσι παρειαί
ὣς Ὀδυσεὺς ἐλεεινὸν ὑπ’ ὀφρύσι δάκρυον εἶβεν.
(Od. 8.521 31)

This song the famous minstrel sang. But the heart of Odysseus was melted and tears
wet his cheeks beneath his eyelids. And as a woman wails and throws herself upon her
dear husband, who has fallen in front of his city and his people, seeking to ward off
from his city and his children the pitiless day; and as she beholds him dying and
gasping for breath, she clings to him and shrieks aloud, while the foe behind her beat
her back and shoulders with their spears, and lead her away to captivity to bear toil and
woe, while with most pitiful grief her cheeks are wasted so did Odysseus let fall pitiful
tears from beneath his brows.
(trans. Murray and Dimock 1995)

The simile provides an apt starting point from which to think about aesthetic
experience and ancient narrative. To be sure, certain aspects of its interpretation

Jonas Grethlein, Luuk Huitink, and Aldo Tagliabue, Introduction: Narrative and Aesthetic Experience in Ancient
Greece In: Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece Edited by: Jonas Grethlein, Luuk Huitink, and
Aldo Tagliabue, Oxford University Press (2020) © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848295.003.0001
2  ,  ,   

are controversial:¹ for instance, does the simile imply that Demodocus’ song
makes Odysseus empathize with his victims or is he only affected by the contrast
between the hero he used to be and the sorry figure he now cuts? However,
regardless of the nuances we may detect in the simile, it is a remarkable fact that
Odysseus’ response to a mere recital should provoke a comparison with such a
profound experience as a woman mourning the death of her husband. Aesthetic
experience is thereby aligned with a highly emotional, visceral real-life event. The
comparison gains additional force through a double inversion: a male victor is
juxtaposed with a female victim; this highlights the defencelessness of Odysseus
against the emotions instilled in him by Demodocus’ song. Furthermore, apart
from the inversions of gender and role, the alignment of Odysseus’ listening with
the woman’s seeing and then even touching her dead husband is also noteworthy.
Since sight was generally considered to be more intense than hearing in ancient
Greece,² the references to ‘seeing’ in the simile highlight the vividness of Odysseus’
emotional experience, while the references to ‘touching’ suggest a still more
intense, embodied response.
Now it may be thought that Odysseus’ reaction represents a special case,
because he listens to, and is deeply moved by, an account of his own experiences.
The Phaeacians, after all, enjoy Demodocus’ performance without any signs of
distress. However, if Odysseus’ response is not paradigmatic of that of a ‘typical’
member of a bard’s audience, neither is the Phaeacians’: Alcinous and his people
live a life of ease that is a far cry from the world of heroes and even more so from
that of Homer’s audience; their detachment is sui generis. Perhaps it is best to
think of the widely different responses of Odysseus and the Phaeacians as repre-
senting two poles on a wide spectrum of reactions which narrative may elicit from
its recipients. Narrative can be received in ways that may remind us of Kant’s
‘disinterested pleasure’, but it also has the capacity to move audiences profoundly,
even to reduce them to tears.
In an important way, however, ‘perhaps Odysseus’s tears may more accurately
figure the norm for Homer’s audience as well as for Aristotle’s’.³ The comparison
of the activity of listening to narrative with an act of seeing and touching
adumbrates the rhetorical concept of enargeia (usually translated ‘vividness’),
which was to figure prominently in later ancient critical treatises and rhetorical
handbooks. While enargeia is often defined as ‘speech which brings its subject
matter before the eyes’⁴, referring primarily to the experience of visual imagery,
ancient critics write as if such imagery comes complete with sounds and haptic
sensations; more generally, enargeia signifies the power of language to transport

¹ For bibliography, see Halliwell (2011) 88 n. 104.

² See, for example, Plut. De audiendo 38a; Hor. Ars P. 180ff. Cf. Squire (2016).
³ Walsh (1984) 5.
⁴ e.g. Anon. Segu. 96: ἔστι δὲ ἐνάργεια λόγος ὑπ’ ὄψιν ἄγων τὸ δηλούμενον. For lists of ancient
definitions along these lines, see Manieri (1998) 123 n. 404; Lausberg (1998) 359 61.
  3

audiences to the narrated scene.⁵ The prominence of enargeia in ancient rhetoric

and criticism, to which we will return in Section 5 below, underscores the
importance that ancient readers attached to the experiential quality of narrative.

2. Experience: From Structuralist Narratology

to Cognitive Studies

Whereas ancient Greek authors and critics clearly set much store by the experi-
ential quality of narrative, the broadly constructivist focus on discourse and
formal features of narrative that continues to dominate the field of Classics has
tended to bracket the notion of ‘experience’, probably because it appears to be too
subjective and slippery a topic for formal and systematic analysis. Thus, while the
taxonomies of narrative of Gérard Genette, Mieke Bal, and others have helped
classicists to explore, for instance, the significance of perspective, the orchestration
of time, and the many facets of voice in a wide range of ancient authors, they are
arguably ill-equipped to deal with (and not really interested in) experience, that is,
with what actually happens when we read or hear a narrative.⁶ A number of
scholars have in fact begun to register their dissatisfaction with formal narrato-
logical approaches on these grounds. Tim Whitmarsh, for one, finds that the
‘antiseptic formulae of narratologists’ are often incompatible with the actual
‘experience of reading’, while Jonas Grethlein has made a case that a focus on
the categories of narratology, which have been mostly derived from readings of
modern novels, risks occluding what renders ancient narratives distinct.⁷
Meanwhile, recent decades have witnessed an increasing interest in aesthetic
experience both inside and outside classical scholarship.⁸ Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
is only the best known of a series of thinkers who wish to complement, if not
replace, the focus on meaning with a focus on presence.⁹ As he contends, we not
only engage with aesthetic and other objects intellectually, but also encounter
them in more visceral ways. Within Classics, Porter has made a strong case for
the origins of aesthetic thought in ancient Greece, and Halliwell has used the
dichotomy of ecstasy and truth to explore aesthetic reflections from Homer
to Ps.-Longinus.¹⁰ Peponi’s concern with the pathology of excited responses to

⁵ See now especially Webb (2016), and see further n. 34 below.

⁶ See, e.g., Genette (1982); Bal (1985). Excellent applications of narratology to Greek texts include de
Jong (2004b²) on Homer, Rood (1998) on Thucydides, and Morrison (2007) on archaic and Hellenistic
poetry. In general, see the series Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative (De Jong et al. (2004 )) and de Jong
(2014), together with the critical review by one of today’s leading narratologists, Fludernik (2015).
⁷ Whitmarsh (2013) 244; Grethlein (2018); (forthcoming c).
⁸ See, explicitly, Grethlein (2015a); Gurd (2016).
⁹ Besides Gumbrecht (2004), see also Mersch (2002) and Seel (2005²). Related movements include
the nuovo realismo of Ferraris (2012) and the new reception of the Heideggerian heritage in anglo-
phone philosophy, e.g. Dreyfus and Taylor (2015).
¹⁰ Porter (2010); Halliwell (2011). See also Porter (2016).
4  ,  ,   

archaic poetry and Liebert’s ‘psychosomatic model’ of aesthetic engagement with

Greek tragedy are further tantalizing examples of this new interest in aesthetic
experience. These fascinating works, however, have not made narrative as
opposed to other modes of discourse a particular concern and so far they have
not had a major impact on the study of ancient narrative.¹¹
While the work of Genette, Bal, and their followers from the 1960s and 1970s
still serves as the main point of reference for classicists, narrative theory has moved
on and generated approaches which can be broadly described as ‘cognitive’.
A prime example is Monika Fludernik’s pioneering study of ‘natural narratology’,
which put the idea of experientiality centre stage.¹² Other prominent cognitive
narratologists are David Herman, who reconceives key concepts of narratology
from a cognitive standpoint; Patrick Colm Hogan, who has a special interest in the
emotions triggered by narrative; Catherine Emmott, who uses linguistic and
cognitive models to map our understanding of stories; and Alan Palmer and Lisa
Zunshine, who have adopted the concept of Theory of Mind for literary studies.¹³
The entries on ‘cognitive narratology’ in the Living Handbook of Narratology, on
‘cognition, emotion and consciousness’ in The Cambridge Companion to Narrative,
and on ‘cognitive narratology’ in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory
illustrate the impact that the cognitive turn has had on the study of narrative.¹⁴
A number of concepts introduced in cognitive studies are particularly useful if
we wish to give substance to the notion of ‘experience’ in narrative. One of these,
which will play a prominent role in the chapters that follow, is ‘immersion’, a
concept which textual scholars have adopted from game studies.¹⁵ Immersion
describes the recipient’s feeling of being drawn into the represented world and of
witnessing what goes on there. As the present volume sets out to show, various
narratological and linguistic devices can lead to a collapse of the distance between
the storyworld and the reader’s own world in terms of both time and space and so
stimulate her to experience that world almost as if it were a slice of real life (see
Section 4 below for an elaboration of the important notion of ‘almost’).
A number of contributions to this volume also profit from the insights of so-
called ‘second-generation’ cognitive literary studies, which allows them to bring
out the embodied aspects of the recipient’s experience.¹⁶ While a first wave of
cognitively inflected literary criticism was strongly influenced by an understanding
of the mind as computational,¹⁷ more recent work has emphasized the embodied
and enactive nature of human cognition. Perception, it has been argued, is not a

¹¹ Peponi (2012); Liebert (2017). See also Sluiter and Rosen (2012); Grethlein (2017).
¹² Fludernik (1996). For a reappraisal of Fludernik’s book, see the forum in Partial Answers 16/2
(2018).
¹³ Herman (2002); Hogan (2011); Emmott (1997); Palmer (2004; 2010); Zunshine (2006).
¹⁴ Cf. Hühn et al. (2018), s.v. ‘cognitive narratology’; Herman (2007a); and Jahn (2005).
¹⁵ Cf. Ryan (2001).
¹⁶ For good introductions, see Kukkonen and Caracciolo (2014); Caracciolo (2014); Cave (2016).
¹⁷ For an intriguing adaptation of such models to classical literature, see Lowe (2000).
  5

passive registering of our environment confined to individual senses, but is

strongly linked to action and involves our entire body. If we assume that our
imagination works analogously to our cognition, this new view has a major impact
on how to understand our response to literature. Perhaps most importantly, the
second generation of cognitive literary studies has the capacity to reorient our
assessment of textual features that render narrative experiential. If our cognition is
embodied and enactive, then narrative, in order to be cognitively realist, has to put
a premium on features that have a strong echo in the reader’s sensorimotor system.
The analysis of narrative from the point of view of second-generation cognitive
studies is still in its infancy, but first elements of cognitively realist narratives have
been identified.¹⁸ Instead of aiming at pictorialist descriptions, experiential nar-
ratives seem rather to introduce things as and when they matter to the action.
A focus on affordances, that is on aspects of things relevant to potential inter-
actions with them, also conforms to our everyday engagement with the environ-
ment. Accounts of simple bodily movements seem to trigger our sensorimotor
system with particular strength. These quick observations (and some of the
chapters that follow elaborate on them) already suffice to drive home the point
that a cognitively inspired study of narrative and its effects on recipients will yield
very different results from its assessment by traditional reader response theory as
advanced by Wolfgang Iser.¹⁹
Admittedly, the dialogue between cognitive science and literary scholarship is
not always an easy one.²⁰ Scholars who wish to deploy not only ‘soft science’ but
also ‘hard science’, notably MRI scans showing neuronal brain activity, face the
problem that there is still no reliable bridge from the analysis of the brain to an
understanding of consciousness. The level of neurons that work in our brains does
not easily translate into the level of symbols by which we understand narrative.
Yet it is increasingly acknowledged by linguists that, contrary to earlier assump-
tions, language is grounded, not just in abstract (conceptual and propositional)
representations alone, but also in the comprehender’s perceptual, sensorimotor
and emotional experience, as reading words and constructions activates regions in
the brain associated with visual perception and kinesthesia. One of the most fully
worked-out and empirically tested theories along these lines is the ‘Immersed
Experiencer Framework’ of Zwaan, in which language is understood as ‘a set of
cues to the comprehender to construct an experiential (perception plus action)
simulation of the described situation’, and comprehension as ‘the vicarious

¹⁸ See, for example, Kuzmičová (2012); Troscianko (2014a). For a first application in Classics, see
Grethlein and Huitink (2017), who argue that the paradox of Homeric vividness can be explained
through an enactive account of the readerly imagination.
¹⁹ For a thought-provoking comparison of embodied models of reading with Iser’s reader response
theory, see Kukkonen 2014.
²⁰ Cf. Ryan (2010), and, more optimistically, Caracciolo (2014) 8 11; Cave (2016) 15 21.
6  ,  ,   

experience of the described situation’.²¹ Evidence is accumulating that the ‘depth’

of embodied processing (the ‘action’-side of things) varies depending on the
kinds of language used, and that readers’ and hearers’ responses to words through
their bodies may lead to fully fledged bodily feelings.²² The challenge awaiting
literary scholars is to get a better and more nuanced sense of the linguistic and
narratological devices that maximize (or minimize, for that matter) the experi-
entiality of texts.
In addition to the resonances with the ancient sensitivity to the experiential
quality of narrative, there is one further point that makes cognitive approaches
appealing to classicists. Developed to deal with the rich virtual worlds evoked in
computer games, ‘immersion’ as a cognitive concept has always been intended to
cover multiple modalities of our cognitive and emotive systems—vision and
hearing, certainly, but also think of a captivated gamer moving along with
movements of the character in the game she controls, and of the exhilaration
and fear which that activity may bring with it—and to span various narrative
media across semiotic systems. Like literary scholars, art historians have been
stimulated by neurological research into recipients of the visual arts.²³ This cross-
medial focus corresponds to an assumption which was widespread in the ancient
world, namely that language and vision have very similar effects, a point captured
in the formula of ut pictura poesis.²⁴

3. Triangulating Modern Theory, Ancient

Narrative, and Ancient Criticism

Inspired by recent developments in cognitive theory and their strong resonance in

ancient material, this volume explores the experiential dimension of ancient Greek
narrative. In particular, it wishes to establish a triangular conversation between
modern theory, ancient narrative, and ancient criticism, in the conviction that
each of these branches of scholarship stands to benefit from such a conversation.
First of all, the focus on experientiality in contemporary narratological and
cognitive criticism opens up new and important aspects of ancient Greek narra-
tives that are difficult to capture otherwise.²⁵ Conversely, ancient material is ‘good
to think with’, as it allows us to reconsider a number of modern theoretical tenets

²¹ Zwaan (2004) 36. It is more fully introduced by Allan (Chapter 1 of this volume).
²² See Zwaan (2009; 2014); Sanford and Emmott (2012) 103 31; Kuijpers and Miall (2011).
²³ See Freedberg and Gallese (2007); Di Dio and Gallese (2009); with the qualifications of Gallagher
(2011).
²⁴ See Webb (2009); Squire (2009).
²⁵ For other attempts to go beyond the frame of traditional structuralist narratology in Classics, see
Grethlein and Rengakos (2009); Cairns and Scodel (2014). For a cognitive approach, see Anderson,
Cairns, and Sprevak (2019), which contains several chapters that deal directly or indirectly with
narrative.
  7

that seem to be universal but often turn out to be essentially shaped by the slim
canon of modern literature on which theoreticians have tended to focus.²⁶ Fur-
thermore, the long tradition in classical scholarship of paying close attention to
usage and style can be made productive for modern theory, as classicists are in a
good position to help give concrete linguistic substance to concepts like ‘immer-
sion’ and ‘experience’ as used by modern critics. Finally, it is useful to include
ancient criticism in the dialogue set up in this volume for at least two reasons. On
the one hand, the prominence in ancient critical and rhetorical theorizing of
concepts such as enargeia fully justifies an approach to ancient Greek narrative
that focuses on its experiential dimensions.²⁷ On the other hand, our readings of
ancient criticism can be refined by considering its aims and methods against the
backdrop of modern cognitive theory.²⁸
This volume is divided into three parts. It opens with a set of chapters on ancient
narrative: Allan tackles Homer and Thucydides. Fearn discusses a wide range of
lyric poetry from Stesichorus and Pindar to Bacchylides and Anacreon. Budelmann
and Van Emde Boas focus on the messenger speech in Greek tragedy. Hau recon-
siders Hellenistic historiography in the light of Diodorus Siculus. Finally, Tagliabue
analyses the Shepherd of Hermas, an apocalyptic text from the Imperial Era.
While the chapters of the first part are arranged in chronological order, the
second part, which is devoted to ancient criticism, proceeds from less to more
technical forms of reflection. It starts with Grethlein’s chapter on the implicit
meditation on experience and narrative in Heliodorus’ Ethiopica. De Jonge dis-
cusses the idea of ekstasis in Ps.-Longinus. Purves teases out the significance of
haptic metaphors in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ rhetorical and literary treatises.
Huitink reassesses the ancient concept of enargeia through an analysis of some of
the most important sources against the background of recent cognitively inflected
reader-response studies. Vatri demonstrates the salience of experience for ancient
theorizing on a single rhetorical figure, asyndeton.
The chapters forming the third part, finally, broaden the perspective of the
volume by inquiring into the medium and context of narrative and in negotiating
the range of aesthetic experience. Gianvittorio-Ungar uses a tantalizing ancient
comment on a performance of Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes in Athenaeus to
highlight the impact of dance on the responses of ancient audiences to Greek
tragedy. Dietrich expounds on the ‘narrative sting’ of visual art, especially in
incomplete sculptures of the Imperial Age. In the final chapter, Peponi makes a
case for a ‘lived aesthetics’ in ancient texts that challenges the neat confinement of
aesthetic experience in most modern discussions.

²⁶ For this approach, see also Grethlein (2015a), (2015b), (2017).

²⁷ More broadly, on traditions of knowledge and their performative dimension in the ancient world,
see Fuhrer and Renger (2012).
²⁸ See on this point Huitink (2019), esp. pp. 175 6.
8  ,  ,   

As this brief survey illustrates, we follow the inclination of most current

narratologists by adopting an encompassing notion of narrative. Whereas many
classicists still adhere to a rather narrow definition of narrative as predicated on
the existence of a narrator, most narratologists now rely on broader concepts
which allow for intergeneric and intermedial comparisons.²⁹ If the long debate
about how to define narrative has something to tell us, then it is that there is not a
single, ‘correct’ concept of narrative, but rather various concepts with different
heuristic values.³⁰ For the purposes of our volume, a comprehensive definition is
most apt. The responses that stories elicit do not depend on a narratorial instance
but can also be triggered by stories which are not mediated by a narrator. We
therefore understand narrative as the representation of a sequence of actions in a
sequential medium. In addition to epic, historiography, and the novel, this volume
also embraces drama, lyric poetry, and apocalyptic literature. One contribution is
even devoted to visual art, which may contain a ‘narrative sting’. Though they are
not explicitly classified as sequential forms, non-narrative lyric and visual art have
the capacity to stimulate their recipients to transform the scenes represented into
sequences of action and are therefore of great interest to an investigation of
narrative and experience.

4. Ancient Narrative: Immersion, Distance, and Further

Aspects of Aesthetic Experience

The chapters in this volume seek to establish a multifaceted picture of narrative

and aesthetic experience, which is nonetheless unified by a number of common
threads. One central concept, which was already mentioned above, is ‘immersion’.
It is introduced in the first chapter after this introduction (Allan) and is then
harnessed in nearly all subsequent chapters. As Allan argues, immersion may
cause readers or listeners to experience a sense of being transported to the scene of
the action and of being absorbed by the narrated events as they unfold. Subse-
quent contributions develop Allan’s views on immersion in several directions. As
Alex Purves brings out in her investigation of Dionysius’ criticism, the feeling of
being immersed is not only visual, but also haptic—a discovery which resonates
interestingly with enactivist accounts of cognition. Immersion can also produce
powerful emotional effects. De Jonge and Vatri use the lenses of Ps.-Longinus and
ancient rhetorical theory respectively to discuss the strong emotional identifica-
tion with the characters in a story, a notion which Huitink aims to make still more

²⁹ See, e.g., W. Wolf (2002); Ryan (2004); Meister (2005).

³⁰ The complexity of the debate and the variety of definitions proposed, discussed, and challenged in
narratology are tangible in that, at least until now, the Living Handbook of Narratology does not feature
an entry for ‘narrative’: see Hühn et al. (2018). For a succinct survey, see Ryan (2007).
  9

precise and tangible by applying the concept of ‘bodily mimesis’ to ancient critical
comments on enargeia.
The chapter by Budelmann and Van Emde Boas can help us hone the definition
of immersion in a different way, as it distinguishes between several modes by
which audiences may attend to a tragic messenger speech. The audience of the
messenger speech in Hippolytus can be transported to the coastal plain and
Hippolytus’ chariot ride, the most obvious form of immersion in this case. They
can, however, also be absorbed in the interaction between Theseus and Hippolytus’
messenger, who is conveying this story; this still counts as immersion, because
the audience directs its attention to the storyworld of the drama. A third level at
which the audience can engage with the play is the actors’ mesmerizing perform-
ance. Now this does not qualify as immersion, as here the audience’s attention is
levelled at the act of representation instead of the represented world and action.
As strong as immersion may be, it is—with very occasional exceptions—
balanced by an awareness that one is attending to a representation. Such aware-
ness is in fact a crucial aspect of aesthetic experience in general:³¹ after all, without
it, to take an example also used by Dietrich in his chapter, Myron’s lifelike
sculpture of a cow would just be . . . a cow.³² The balance between immersion
and reflection seems to change constantly in the reading process: sometimes the
pull into the narrated world flares up; sometimes the mediation is felt with
particular intensity. In his exploration of the Ethiopica, Grethlein demonstrates
that Heliodorus uses embedded stories to meditate with great nuance on the
dynamic concomitance of immersion and reflection. This meditation, Grethlein
proposes, can help us to question the assumption, deeply ingrained in post-
structuralist thought, that experience and reflection are necessarily at loggerheads.
The tension between immersion and reflection is obvious, and yet, in addition
to being yoked together in aesthetic experience, these two aspects of response
may also mutually reinforce each other. Thus, one can ask if it is because of
the convincing performance of the actors of Hippolytus—that is, because of the
performance’s immersive pull—that the audience comes to admire the actors, or,
conversely, if the sense that the actors put on a convincing show makes the
audience all the more eager to ‘step into’ the illusion that they are watching
Theseus and Hippolytus’ messenger. When in the Ethiopica Cnemon begs Cala-
siris to hurry up with his narration, he alerts the reader to the mediation, but may
equally pull the reader deeper into Calasiris’ narrative, as the postponement
heightens the suspense of the story. De Jonge shows in his contribution how

³¹ This is an important point made from different perspectives and in different terms by Walton
(1990); Schaeffer (1999); Wolf (2014). It is encapsulated in Husserl’s phenomenology, on which, see
Grethlein (2015a).
³² The idea that aesthetic experience depends on both recognizing the illusion and being taken in by
it already plays an important role in ancient discussions, some of which focus on Myron’s cow, on
which see Squire (2010); Wessels (2014).
10  ,  ,   

Ps.-Longinus is similarly swept off his feet by the irrational emotions of a Sapphic
poem, but simultaneously admires it as the product of a rational mind.
As important as the balance between immersion and reflection is, it does not
exhaust the range of aesthetic experience. In his recent book Dissonances, Gurd
outlines the auditory aesthetics of archaic and classical poetry.³³ Greek poets, he
shows, put a premium on ‘sound’, which affects the audience in a non-semantic
way. In this volume, Fearn tackles samples from lyrical poetry to show that poetic
texture has the power to enthral the recipient. Rhythm or patterns of sound may
distract the reader from the represented world and nonetheless spellbind the
reader, intensifying her experience. At the same time, such formal elements may
ultimately help to pull the reader into the represented world; as Purves demon-
strates, Dionysius of Halicarnassus expounded on such effects.
Audiences and readers may also be engaged in a more intellectual way. Allan
touches on detached accounts in Thucydides which make readers view, and reflect
on, the events from a distance. A terse reference to a massacre instead of a vivid
account may have a shocking effect or prompt a critical evaluation of the circum-
stances. In his reading of the Shepherd of Hermas, Tagliabue shows how non-
sequential forms of narrative jolt readers out of an immersive reading and lead
them to experience the timelessness of the divine through a more distanced,
thoughtful sort of engagement with the text.
The experiential quality of narrative not only has many facets, but can also
serve a variety of purposes, as the chapters of this volume show. Hau demonstrates
that the sensationalism for which certain Hellenistic historiographers have often
been denigrated also constitutes a means of driving home moral messages.
A focus on the experiential quality of this perceived sensationalism thus makes
us see the works of authors like Duris of Samos and Phylarchus in a new light.
Tagliabue proposes that the Shepherd of Hermas uses the means of narrative to
support the theological agenda of the text, in order to lead its readers to an
experience of the Church and of the timelessness befitting its divine nature. By
trying to express what is ultimately beyond representation, the Shepherd of
Hermas probes the limits of narrative and its experiential dimension. As Dietrich
argues, the narrative appeal inherent in incomplete sculptures forms part of a
broader aesthetics of the void in Imperial culture, which can also be traced in the
medium of pantomime.

5. Narrative and Experience in Ancient Criticism

From its beginnings to the Imperial era, ancient Greek literature is highly reflexive.
Odysseus’ response to Demodocus’ song in the Odyssey and Cnemon’s absorption

³³ Gurd (2016).
  11

in the Ethiopica illustrate that the experiential quality of narrative attracted highly
nuanced reflections. It is, therefore, no surprise that ancient criticism and rhetoric
developed a rich terminology to talk about the experiential aspects of reader
response, including such important concepts as enargeia, which is discussed in
Huitink’s contribution, and ekstasis, which De Jonge shows plays an important
role in Ps.-Longinus’ treatise On the Sublime. Ps.-Longinus further illustrates the
fact that it is not only literary texts which blur the boundaries between literary
practice and criticism. While Heliodorus features some of the most trenchant
reflections on narrative and experience to have come down to us from antiquity,
Ps.-Longinus in some passages enacts what he describes.
It is, of course, not always easy to interpret ancient criticism in the light of
modern concepts. This is in part because ancient critics draw sustenance from
contemporary theories of perception, memory, and language which are not our
own. Thus, when they use terms such as ‘entrance’ (thelgein), ‘bewitch’ (kēlein)
or ‘knock sideways/astound’ (ekplēttein) to talk about the impact of discourse,
they operate on the assumption that language (logos) is a physical force which
literally imprints itself on the mind. Such terms do not necessarily overlap with
modern terminology used to describe the experiential aspects of reader response.
Ancient critics also do not single out narrative discourse in particular, as logos is a
more general concept. Still, Quintilian mentions enargeia as a virtus narrationis
(Inst. 4.2.63) and Vatri shows that, interestingly enough, when ancient critics
associate peculiarly immersive effects with asyndeton, it is from narrative passages
that they tend to draw their examples.
Despite, or rather because of, the differences from modern theory, the study
of ancient criticism has a lot to contribute to the three-way conversation which
this volume wishes to establish. For instance, Huitink’s contribution on enargeia
and Purves’ chapter on the haptic quality which Dionysius discerns in the phonetic
and stylistic features of an Odyssean passage show how, on the one hand, certain
hitherto alienating aspects of ancient criticism appear in a new light when con-
fronted with recent cognitive approaches, and how, on the other hand, ancient
critics’ close readings reveal a sensitivity to stylistic minutiae which we have lost but
would do well to regain. In general, ancient concepts often turn out to be more
multifaceted than one expects. For instance, the ancient concept of enargeia
includes precepts to do, not only with detailed description, but also with phonetic
effects, onomatopoeic devices, epithets, various kinds of verbal repetition, and even
temporal features, especially the gradual unfolding of events and the use of the
historic present.³⁴

³⁴ See Allan, De Jong, and De Jonge (2014; 2017) for a comparison between the ancient concept of
enargeia and Ryan’s (2001) ‘immersion’, and Huitink (2019) for an embodied, enactivist reading of the
concept. Good surveys which emphasize the variety of devices said to contribute to enargeia are
Meijering (1987) 39 44; Manieri (1998) 79 192; Otto (2009) 67 134; Webb (2016).
12  ,  ,   

The vast potential of ancient reflections comes to the fore in Peponi’s argument.
Modern aesthetics, notably under the influence of Kant, tends to focus on the
(usually quite brief) period of time we actually attend to the object of an aesthetic
experience. This is, however, an artificial limitation, since aesthetic experience
continues to resonate after we have attended to the aesthetic object itself. From
passages in Ps-Longinus, Lucretius, and Libanius, Peponi derives a more inclusive
‘lived aesthetics’ that does justice to the wider repercussions of aesthetic experi-
ences in the modern as well as the ancient world. Peponi’s case nicely illustrates
the reciprocity of the triangular conversation between ancient narrative, ancient
criticism, and modern theory. Not only can our understanding of ancient material
benefit from modern aesthetics, but ancient reflections, whether explicit in criti-
cism or implicit in narrative, also have the power to challenge firmly established,
but questionable tenets of our aesthetic agenda.
By no means does this volume aim to treat the experiential quality of ancient
narrative and its conceptualization in ancient criticism exhaustively. It discusses
what we hope is a fair and representative selection of texts from the archaic to the
Imperial eras and covers the most important as well as some minor genres of
ancient narrative. There are, however, many other texts that would benefit from
an analysis along the lines sketched in this introduction. By the same token,
immersion and its intricacies take centre stage in this volume. Given the prom-
inence of immersive features in ancient narrative and their salience in ancient
criticism, this focus seems justified; at the same time, the discussion of other
aspects of the reader’s response in some chapters indicates the need for further
explorations of, say, the effect of sound and other features. We therefore hope that
the triangulation of modern theory, ancient narrative, and ancient criticism
proposed in this volume will stimulate further studies in the cognitive dimension
of ancient narrative.
 1
Narrative Immersion
Some Linguistic and Narratological Aspects
Rutger J. Allan

1. Experientiality and Immersion

A good story is like life. By representing experiences in such a way that they appeal
to real-life experiences, a gripping story is able to give the reader the feeling of
being part of the storyworld: the reader sees what the characters see, thinks what
the characters think, and feels what the characters feel. According to the narra-
tologist Monika Fludernik, the quality of experientiality, ‘the quasi-mimetic evo-
cation of real-life experience’,¹ should be regarded as the defining characteristic of
narrative rather than, for example, plot structure. For Fludernik, narrative is a
subjective representation of actions, intentions, and feelings filtered through the
medium of consciousness: ‘narrativity is primarily based on a consciousness factor
rather than on actantial dynamics or teleological directedness’.² In other words,
narrativity is experientiality. Even though many narratologists may not go so far
as to equate narrativity with experientiality, most will agree that experientiality is
indeed a crucial element of narrative.³
Narrative experientiality has two aspects that are intimately connected: on the
one hand, it involves the representation of human experiences in the text; on the
other hand, it relates to the capacity of a narrative text to effect a certain
psychological experience for its recipient (listener or reader). The tight interplay
between these two aspects of experientiality is also evident in the phenomenon of
immersion, which will be the main focus of this paper.

¹ Fludernik (1996) 12. ² Fludernik (1996) 30.

³ For some general points of criticism on Fludernik’s view, see, e.g., Herman (2002) 140 5.
According to Herman (2002) 9 22, narrative is more adequately characterized by the presence of
four basic elements: (i) situatedness (in a specific discourse context), (ii) event sequencing (structured
time course), (iii) world disruption (introduction of a disequilibrium into the storyworld), (iv) ‘what’s it
like’ (how some consciousness experiences the world disruption). The last element can be roughly
equated with Fludernik’s experientiality. One of the problems with Fludernik’s experiential definition
of narrativity is that it blurs the genre boundary between narrative and lyric. Grethlein (2015a)
criticizes Fludernik’s conception of narrative by pointing out (through an analysis of Heliodorus’
Ethiopica) the importance of the temporal dynamics, more specifically, plot development for the
experientiality of narrative.

Rutger J. Allan, Narrative Immersion: Some Linguistic and Narratological Aspects In: Experience, Narrative, and
Criticism in Ancient Greece Edited by: Jonas Grethlein, Luuk Huitink, and Aldo Tagliabue, Oxford University Press
(2020) © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848295.003.0002
16  . 

A well-known psychological effect triggered by works of art is the audience’s

feeling of being mentally drawn into the world that is represented by the work of
art. In the field of narratology, this psychological phenomenon is referred to by the
term immersion.⁴ This notion has been introduced into the field of cognitive
narratology by Marie-Laure Ryan⁵ and it has rapidly gained ground across various
other academic disciplines such as visual art, drama, and film studies.⁶ It goes
without saying that this increasing interest in the phenomenon gained consider-
able impetus with the development of new technologies (such as 3D cinema,
computer gaming, and virtual reality) which aim at enhancing the subject’s feeling
of being immersed in a virtual world.
Immersion can be defined as the feeling of being transported to a virtual world
to the extent that one experiences it—up to a point—as if it were the actual world.
The ‘up to a point’ is an important proviso in the definition. The experience of
being immersed in an artificial world hinges on a willing suspension of disbelief:
an immersed reader or spectator will inevitably retain some degree of self-
awareness and awareness of the actual physical world surrounding him or her.
An immersed reader/spectator will also remain aware to some degree that the
world represented by the work of art is not the actual world.⁷ This means that a
complete immersion in the storyworld to the extent that one, without any
reservation, takes it as the actual world is impossible.⁸
The intensity of the experience of being immersed is dependent on various
cognitive and emotional properties of the immersed subject but it is obviously
also determined by particular features of the work of art (or, more specifically, the
text) that is meant to elicit the immersive experience. In the conception of the
Immersed Experiencer Framework (IEF) developed by the cognitive psychologist
Rolf Zwaan:

⁴ See Ryan (1991), (2015 [2001]). There are various theoretical concepts from different research
traditions that are similar to immersion: entrancement (Nell (1988)), psychological participation
(Walton (1990)), transportation (Gerrig (1993); Green and Brock (2000)) or aesthetic illusion (Wolf
(1993), (2004); Wolf, Bernhart, and Mahler (2013)). These studies have been of crucial importance to
our understanding of immersion. An excellent introduction to the field of research is Wolf ’s entry
‘Illusion (Aesthetic)’ in the online Living Handbook of Narratology (Hühn et al. (2018)).
⁵ See Ryan (1991) 21 3.
⁶ In her 1991 book, Ryan more prominently uses the term ‘recentering’ to describe the reader’s
transportation to a fictional world. The terms ‘immersion’ and ‘immersive’ have emerged in virtual-
reality technology to describe a user’s experience of being physically present in a simulated, computer-
generated environment. See also Ryan (2015 [2001]) and Wolf, Bernhart, and Mahler (2013).
⁷ Our residual awareness of our real environment when we attend to a story and our realization that
the storyworld is not ‘real’, even if we are fully immersed, is also discussed by Grethlein (2015), pointing
out that our reception of narrative is necessarily ‘bracketed by “as-if” ’ and showing that aesthetic
experience hinges on intricate interplay between immersion and a more reflective stance towards the
narrative. See also Wolf (2004) 328; Grethlein (Chapter 6 of this volume); and Budelmann and Van
Emde Boas (Chapter 3 of this volume).
⁸ Complete cognitive immersion would come closest to having a dream or hallucination. When we
are dreaming, we are not reminded of the real world as we are in the case of narrative immersion: we do
not have a book in our hands or are watching a film screen. Emotions, therefore, affect a dreamer in an
unrestrained way, not curbed by the realization that the experienced world is in fact not the real world.
   17

language is a set of cues to the comprehender to construct an experiential

(perception plus action) simulation of the described situation. In this conceptu-
alization, the comprehender is an immersed experiencer of the described situ-
ation, and comprehension is the vicarious experience of the described situation.⁹

Zwaan’s IEF is an embodied theory of language comprehension. The idea behind

the embodied understanding of language is that words activate regions in the
brain which are also involved when the subject is actually experiencing the
referent of the word. When reading a sentence in a narrative, the immersed reader
will construct a mental representation that is grounded in the same sensory,
motor, and emotional sources in the brain as the real-life experience.¹⁰ It should
be noted that Zwaan’s conception of the reader as an immersed experiencer is
broader than the notion of readerly immersion as intended in this chapter.
Zwaan’s claim is that a reader as a language comprehender will tap into the
same sensorimotor sources as real-life experience and thereby vicariously experi-
ence the described situation. Narrative immersion as it is conceived of in this
chapter is a more specific phenomenon. It not only involves a vicarious experience
of the described scene, but also narrative immersion additionally involves the
feeling of being transported to the storyworld, which requires the reader’s reduced
awareness of the actual world and of the text as the medium of the representation.
In a more recent publication, Zwaan takes a more nuanced stance towards the
claim that language comprehension is fully grounded in the brain’s system of action,
perception, and emotion.¹¹ Zwaan proposes a pluralist view of cognition in which, in
some contexts of language use, comprehension is more strongly grounded in
perception and action (grounded, embodied view of cognition), while, in other
contexts, comprehension more strongly involves the manipulation of abstract, amo-
dal symbols (symbolic view of cognition). This pluralist and scalar view of language
comprehension helps us to understand at least one aspect of narrative immersion.¹²
Immersive texts will invite the reader to construct a mental representation of the
described situation that is grounded in perception, action, and emotion, while non-
immersive texts lack a clearly defined spatio-temporal framework and centre around
abstract concepts that are not (directly) grounded in sensorimotor experience.
The experience of immersion is a scalar phenomenon. Readers can feel them-
selves being immersed in the storyworld to various degrees. The more a text
enables the reader to construct an experiential simulation of the described situ-
ation (e.g. by means of words or other linguistic cues), the more intense the feeling
of immersion will be.

⁹ Zwaan (2004) 36.

¹⁰ For an overview of embodiment theory and empirical studies of the experiential aspect of
narrative understanding, I refer to Sanford and Emmott (2012) 132 60. An introduction to the study
of embodied cognition is Barsalou (2010).
¹¹ See Zwaan (2014).
¹² I thank the editors for pointing this out to me. See further the Introduction, Section 2.
18  . 

What are the textual cues capable of evoking an immersive experience in the
reader? In relation to literary texts, a number of textual features serving to
transport the reader mentally to the scene are discussed by Ryan. As immersive
devices she mentions such diverse elements as internal and variable focalization,¹³
scene narration, dialogue and free indirect discourse, prospective (rather than
retrospective) first-person narration, a totally effaced narrator, mimesis ‘showing’
(rather than diegesis ‘telling’), and reassignment of the reference of deictic elem-
ents to the perspective of a participant in the scene.¹⁴
Building on Ryan’s work, I would like to propose a set of linguistic and
narratological elements which I consider to be conducive to immersion. In the
following list, I categorize the immersive features under five general headings:
Verisimilitude, Perspective, Transparency, Interest and Emotional Involvement,
and the Principle of Minimal Departure.¹⁵

(I) Verisimilitude: The text evokes a lifelike (‘vivid’) mental representation of

persons, objects, actions, and their setting.¹⁶ A lifelike representation:
(a) focuses on concrete, physical objects;
(b) provides graphic sensory details;
(c) provides detailed spatial information;¹⁷
(d) progresses at a relatively slow pace (scene narration: narration time
approximates narrated time);
(e) advances in chronological order (no flashbacks/flashforwards)
(f) activates (cultural) knowledge schemas (cognitive frames) which enable
the addressee to ‘complete the picture’ mentally.¹⁸

¹³ At first glance, one might suspect that variable focalization, the shift in the focalization from one
character to another, disturbs the feeling of immersion. However, it seems that humans possess a
considerable cognitive capacity to process shifts in perspective without there being any detriment to the
feeling of being immersed in a scene. For example, in the opening scene of the film Saving Private Ryan at
Omaha Beach, a scene often praised for its immersive qualities, the camera standpoint shifts continually,
sometimes taking the point of view of one of the soldiers (subjective shot), sometimes taking a perspective
that cannot be identified with a character (objective shot). This continuous shift in point of view (between
subjects, as well as from subjective to objective and back) is in no way detrimental to the audience’s feeling
of being immersed in the battle scene. I will return to this issue at a later stage.
¹⁴ See Ryan (2015) 85 114.
¹⁵ This list is a slightly evolved version of the list of immersive features published in Allan, De Jong,
and De Jonge (2014). My identification of five general aspects of immersion is based on Wolf ’s
inventory of principles of aesthetic illusion (see Wolf (2004) and his ‘Introduction’ in Wolf,
Bernhart, and Mahler (2013)).
¹⁶ See also Wolf (2004) 339 40 and Wolf, Bernhart, and Mahler (2013) 43 4. Texts that evoke a
specific location at a specific time and are rich in descriptions of sensory details and (vigorous) action/
movement are likely to induce embodied simulation effects (see, e.g., Zwaan (2004); Sanford and
Emmott (2012) 155 6; and Huitink (Chapter 9 of this volume)).
¹⁷ Preferably, the spatial clues are associated with a deictic center within the described scene: see also
below under (II) Perspective.
¹⁸ Written descriptions of objects and events are necessarily ‘gappy’: they do not feed every conceivable
detail to the reader. This ‘gappiness’ is not necessarily detrimental to the immersive experience, since a
reader will be able to fill in the details on the basis of his or her general world knowledge and personal
experiences. For a discussion of the role of cognitive schemata and scripts in understanding literary texts,
   19

(II) Perspective: The text chooses its spatio-temporal deictic centre within
the described scene. Preferably, it takes the perspective of (is focalized by)
a character with whom the addressee may identify and feel empathy.¹⁹
Specific linguistic indications of this perspective shift are:
(a) proximal (‘here’ and ‘now’) deixis (e.g. historic present);
(b) imperfect aspect (indicating an ‘internal viewpoint’);²⁰
(c) subjective-evaluative vocabulary which can be ascribed to a character.
(III) ‘Transparency’ of the text: The text directs the addressee’s attention to
the storyworld, that is, it defocuses from the text itself as a medium and
from the narrator as a mediating voice.²¹ The artificiality of the text is
concealed; the narrator remains invisible. More specifically, we will find:
(a) no metanarrative elements (e.g. narrator comments);
(b) direct or free indirect discourse;²²
(c) no elements drawing attention to the conventionality of the textual
(literary) genre.²³
(IV) Interest and emotional involvement: The theme of the text is of strong
interest to the addressee. The text contains elements eliciting the addressee’s
emotional response (e.g. subjective-evaluative vocabulary).²⁴ The text
(segment) is crucial to the main storyline and creates suspense.²⁵
(V) Principle of Minimal Departure:²⁶ the storyworld should not (or only
minimally) depart from the ‘real world’ as we know it: the storyworld should
be internally consistent and subject to the same rules as ‘real life’.²⁷

see Stockwell (2002) 75 89. There is also empirical evidence for the importance of inferences from world
knowledge (cognitive scenarios) in discourse comprehension (Sanford and Emmott (2012) 12 44).

¹⁹ This is an aspect of Ryan’s emotional immersion (Ryan (2015) 106 14). See also Wolf (2004) 340
and Wolf, Bernhart, and Mahler (2013) 47 8.
²⁰ For the mimetic quality of the imperfect, see Bakker (1997b), (2007). Rijksbaron (2012) =
Rijksbaron (2019) 133 69 discusses the imperfect’s function in character focalization.
²¹ Cf. Ryan’s requirement of transparency of the medium in the experience of virtual reality (Ryan
(2001) 56 8, 118 19). See also Wolf (2004) 340, 342 3 and Wolf, Bernhart, and Mahler (2013) 50 1.
²² For the effect of immediacy, involvement, and vividness of the use of direct speech, see, e.g., Leech
and Short (2007) 276. There is also some empirical evidence for this effect; see Sanford and Emmott
(2012) 181 90.
²³ Ars est celare artem. To put it in Russian formalist terms, defamiliarization is detrimental to
immersion since it draws the audience’s attention to the artistic devices used in the literary work and
challenges the audience’s familiar perceptions of the world. It encourages the audience to take a distanced,
observing stance with respect to the represented world. As noted by Ryan, self-reflexivity in literature is
incompatible with the experience of immersion (Ryan 2001): a reader is not able to attend mentally to the
verbal medium and the world it represents at the same time. An example is the disruption of the dramatic
illusion as caused by the breaching of the fourth wall in Aristophanic comedy. For this reason, immersive
works of art tend to be serious rather than comic. See also Wolf (2004) 341, 344 5.
²⁴ Cf. also (II) Perspective (c).
²⁵ See also Wolf (2004) 342 and Wolf, Bernhart, and Mahler (2013) 50.
²⁶ See Ryan (1991) 48 60.
²⁷ Departures may be tolerated if they can be explained by generic conventions (see Ryan (1991) 51,
Wolf (2004) 340, and Wolf, Bernhart, and Mahler (2013) 46). For example, we may assume that
Homeric epic features such as the use of hexameters, the epic Kunstsprache, and the appearance of the
20  . 

Real W or l d

Wor ld of Na r r ation

writer narrator St or ywor ld

reader narratee

Figure 1.1 The reader’s experience of immersion in the storyworld

The experience of immersion can be represented graphically as in Figure 1.1.

The reader experiences a mental transportation into the storyworld (arrow)
which is in the focus of the reader’s attention (thick circle). Awareness of the
surrounding real world (including the reader’s self-awareness) and the mediating
world of narration, on the other hand, is mentally backgrounded but not entirely
absent (dashed circles).²⁸
Immersion can be a useful addition to the theoretical apparatus used to analyse
Greek narrative. An important virtue of the concept of immersion is that it is
firmly embedded in current narratological and linguistic theory: it relates to well-
established narratological concepts such as speed, order, focalization, narratorial
visibility, suspense, and genre conventions. Immersion also substantially draws

gods on the scene did not disrupt the audience’s immersive experience (even though these deviate from
the audience’s real-life experiences) since these features conform to the epic generic conventions
associated with a poetic performance. To put it differently, they do not violate the audience’s
expectations by disrupting existing cognitive schemas (cf. Stockwell’s schema preservation; Stockwell
(2002) 79 81). We may even assume that the special language of Homeric epic enhances the audience’s
feeling of immersion in the storyworld as it functions as a catalyst to help the audience to be mentally
transported into the exotic past heroic world distinct from the audience’s present world; see Clay (2011) 15.

²⁸ The figure is a more elaborate version of a figure presented by Dannenberg (2008) 24.
   21

on linguistic theory. Since the emergence of cognitive narratology,²⁹ cognitive

poetics,³⁰ text world theory,³¹ and mental space/blending theory,³² the traditional
disciplinary boundaries between literary criticism and (cognitive) linguistics have
been blurred to a considerable extent. This converging development has stimu-
lated the application of linguistic concepts to literary criticism. In the case of a
literary phenomenon like immersion, one may think of linguistic categories such
as tense-aspect, modality, deixis, and cognitive schemas/frames. A further, more
practical advantage of using linguistic analytic concepts is that they can contribute
to a fine-grained close reading of the text. Finally, a promising aspect of immer-
sion is that it can also be studied empirically in the field of cognitive psychology.
This line of research may yield valuable insights into such issues as the relation
between immersion and emotion and the role of mental simulation.³³
In order to illustrate how we can apply the notion of immersion to Greek
narrative, I will discuss a number of passages from Homer and Thucydides
describing battle scenes (Section 2). To throw the immersive passages into relief,
I will also present some examples of passages from Homer and Thucydides that
lack immersive features and thus invite the reader to take a more distanced
perspective with respect to the storyworld (Section 3). The choice of these two
authors is no coincidence: both have been praised for their enargeia, their capacity
to portray scenes in such a way as to turn the listener/reader into an eyewitness to
the narrated events.³⁴
The concept of immersion and the specific textual features associated with
immersion show obvious similarities with enargeia as well as other ancient
technical terms such as ἐναγώνιος and ekphrasis.³⁵ The similarities between
immersion and enargeia are striking: they both have to do with texts which,
through their wealth of sensory details, create the illusion that the hearer or reader
is actually perceiving the described object or events. Both concepts are associated
with the emotional impact of the described scene on the recipient. As Huitink
shows in Chapter 9 of this volume, there are also indications that the ancient
critics in their conception of enargeia had an understanding that identification
with an intradiegetic audience may steer the recipient’s emotional response

²⁹ See, e.g., Ryan (1991); Gerrig (1993); Fludernik (1993), (1996); Jahn (1996); and Herman (2002).
³⁰ See, e.g., Stockwell (2002). ³¹ See Werth (1999) and Gavins (2007).
³² See, e.g., Dancygier (2012).
³³ Examples of empirical research relating to immersion are Zwaan (2004)’s Immersed Experiencer
Framework and Green and Brock 2000’s Transportation Theory. In Chapter 3, Ryan (2015) provides a
brief overview of cognitive psychological research on immersion. For immersion and cognitive theory,
see also Allan (2019).
³⁴ For Homer, cf. schol. bT Il. 6.467 and 23.362 72; Bakker (2005); Clay (2011); Plett (2012); Allan, De
Jong, and De Jonge (2014) and Allan (2019); for Thucydides, cf. Plut. De glor. Ath. 347a; Connor (1985);
Walker (1993); Bakker (1997b), (2007); Allan (2013), Allan (2018); Grethlein (2013a), (2013b), (2015b).
³⁵ For enargeia, see Walker 1993; Plett 2012; and Huitink (Chapter 9 of this volume); for ἐναγώνιος,
see Ooms and De Jonge (2013) and for ekphrasis, see Webb (2009). For the relationship between the
concept of immersion and the ancient terminology, see Allan, De Jong, and De Jonge (2014), (2017).
22  . 

(cf. the immersive function of perspective above) and that enargeia involves the
idea of transparency of the medium.

2. Immersion and Greek Narrative

(1) [Ajax is beset by the Trojans’ flying spears.]

δεινὴν δὲ περὶ κροτάφοισι φαεινὴ
πήληξ βαλλομένη καναχὴν ἔχε, βάλλετο δ’ αἰεὶ
κὰπ φάλαρ’ εὐποίηθ’ ὃ δ’ ἀριστερὸν ὦμον ἔκαμνεν
ἔμπεδον αἰὲν ἔχων σάκος αἰόλον οὐδὲ δύναντο
ἀμφ’ αὐτῷ πελεμίξαι ἐρείδοντες βελέεσσιν.
αἰεὶ δ’ ἀργαλέῳ ἔχετ’ ἄσθματι, κὰδ δέ οἱ ἱδρὼς
πάντοθεν ἐκ μελέων πολὺς ἔρρεεν, οὐδέ πῃ εἶχεν
ἀμπνεῦσαι πάντῃ δὲ κακὸν κακῷ ἐστήρικτο.
(Hom. Il. 16.104 11)

The bright helmet kept up a fearful clatter around his temples under the constant
hitting, and there was hit after hit on the well-made cheek pieces. His left shoulder was
tiring under the continuous holding of the glittering shield: but for all the pressure
from their spears they could not dislodge it from him. All the time he was gripped by
painful gasping, and the sweat ran in streams from all over his body, and he had no
chance to recover his breath all around him danger was piled on danger.
(trans. Hammond (1987), adapted)

An important aspect of the immersive quality of this passage is its wealth of

sensory details. It zooms in on a number of concrete objects of which perceptual
features are mentioned: the helmet is bright and gives a fearful clatter, the helmet
and shield are hit incessantly, the cheek pieces are well-made, the shield is
glittering, Ajax’ gasping is painful, and sweat is streaming down his limbs. The
passage also provides detailed information about the spatial dimensions by means
of prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs: περὶ κροτάφοισι, κὰπ φάλαρ’, ἀριστερόν,
ἀμφ’ αὐτῷ, κὰδ (ἔρρεεν), πάντοθεν, ἐκ μελέων, πάντῃ.
In Ancient Greek narrative, the imperfect is often used to present the described
scene from an internal viewpoint (instead of a retrospective viewpoint), viewing
the events as they are taking place without reaching an endpoint. This internal
viewpoint may be identifiable with a story character (in which case we are dealing
with character focalization)³⁶ but it may also invoke a depersonalized ‘camera
standpoint’ from which the scene is registered.

³⁶ Cf. Rijksbaron (2012).

   23

Furthermore, the persistent use of the imperfect (ἔχε, βάλλετο, ἔκαμνεν,

δύναντο, ἔχετ’, ἔρρεεν, εἶχεν (shown in bold)) suggests that the events and states
described should be interpreted as occurring simultaneously rather than
sequentially.³⁷ This has special consequences for the spatial and temporal
dimensions of the presentation of the scene.
In a narrative text, if there are no explicit indications of the temporal relation
between the narrated events, the order in which the events are told will be
interpreted by default as reflecting the chronological order: the order of the
narration iconically reflects the temporal order of the narrated events. In our
passages this temporal principle is still valid but manifests itself in a different way.
Since the imperfects refer to events and states that are temporally coextensive, the
order of the narration does not signal the subsequent occurrence of the events but
suggests instead that the narrator moves his gaze through the scene, successively
focusing his attention on one of the ongoing events or states.³⁸ In this ‘scanning
operation’, narrating and narrated time are necessarily aligned: every time the
narrator fixes his (visual) attention on another facet within a complex scene,
narrated time advances to the same extent. To compare, if narrating time were
not parallelled by the progression of narrated time, we would be dealing with a
description of a static picture.
The movement of the narrator’s (and with him the narratee’s) visual attention
through the scene obviously also has a spatial aspect. The strong focus on Ajax’
body parts and on specific parts of his armour creates the effect that we are
viewing the scene in close-up.³⁹ The narrator’s gaze moves downwards across
Ajax’ body: Ajax’ helmet is bright and is making a ringing sound as it is hit, his
well-made cheek pieces are also being hit incessantly, his left shoulder is becoming
tired, his shield is glittering and immovable, his breathing is difficult, and his sweat
is running heavily down his limbs.
Although the scene seems to be primarily focalized by the narrator, there are
also indications that the narrator’s perspective is at times blended with Ajax’
perspective.⁴⁰ The use of subjective-evaluative terms such as δεινή and κακὸν κακῷ

³⁷ The pluperfect ἐστήρικτο is no different from the imperfects in this respect as it denotes a state
simultaneous to the preceding imperfects. This means that we are dealing with what I call the
descriptive mode rather than with the diegetic mode (for my typology of narrative modes, I refer to
Allan (2009) and (2013)). Note that I use the term ‘descriptive’ in a broader way than is usual in
narratology. I also include scenes in which the events (activities, accomplishments, or achievements)
are portrayed as occurring simultaneously and as not (yet) reaching their completion (‘he was running’,
‘he was throwing’, ‘he was dying’).
³⁸ Following Chafe (1994) and Langacker (2001), clauses or, more precisely, intonation units can be
seen as attentional frames, i.e. successive windows of attention subsuming a cognitively manageable
amount of conceptual content. Attentional frames are the primary units of discourse. Bakker (1997a) is
an application of this idea to the analysis of Homeric discourse.
³⁹ For the distinction between various spatial standpoints in Homeric epic, I refer to De Jong and
Nünlist (2004).
⁴⁰ For a case of blended viewpoints (or double focalization) in Thucydides, I refer to Allan (2018).
24  . 

invite us to identify with him and view the events from his perspective. The
addition of the detail περὶ κροτάφοισι stresses that the terrible noise was very
close to his ears.⁴¹ Although terms like ἔκαμνεν and ἀργαλέῳ may also have an
external visible aspect, they certainly also give us an insight into Ajax’ mental state.
These hints of Ajax’ own perception of his dire situation increase our empathy and
our emotional involvement with his fate.
These shifts from an external to internal viewpoint and vice versa do not
disturb immersion.⁴² Recipients of a narrative show a considerable ability to
process shifts in perspective without experiencing them as unnatural or disruptive.
Zwaan describes this type of transition as follows:

When the experiencer whose perspective the comprehender as an immersed

experiencer is invited to take is an agent, actively changing the environment, an
internal state (e.g., a goal) might transition into an action, which may transition
into a change in the environment, which may then transition into another
internal state (e.g., frustration when the current state of the environment is not
consistent with the goal motivating the action).⁴³

According to Zwaan, this transition from external to internal perspective and back
is natural to discourse and experientially based. In everyday life, we are used to
blending external and internal perspectives, through our ability (and inclination)
to ascribe mental states (beliefs, feelings, intentions) to agents on the basis of the
agent’s observable behaviour.
Another passage illustrating the immersive qualities of Homeric narrative is the
account of Achilles’ killing of Hector:

(2) οἷος δ’ ἀστὴρ εἶσι μετ’ ἀστράσι νυκτὸς ἀμολγῷ

ἕσπερος, ὃς κάλλιστος ἐν οὐρανῷ ἵσταται ἀστήρ,
ὣς αἰχμῆς ἀπέλαμπ’ εὐήκεος, ἣν ἄρ’ Ἀχιλλεὺς
πάλλεν δεξιτερῇ φρονέων κακὸν Ἕκτορι δίῳ
εἰσορόων χρόα καλόν, ὅπῃ εἴξειε μάλιστα.
τοῦ δὲ καὶ ἄλλο τόσον μὲν ἔχε χρόα χάλκεα τεύχεα
καλά, τὰ Πατρόκλοιο βίην ἐνάριξε κατακτάς
φαίνετο δ’ ᾗ κληῗδες ἀπ’ ὤμων αὐχέν’ ἔχουσι
λαυκανίην, ἵνα τε ψυχῆς ὤκιστος ὄλεθρος
τῇ ῥ’ ἐπὶ οἷ μεμαῶτ’ ἔλασ’ ἔγχεϊ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς,
ἀντικρὺ δ’ ἁπαλοῖο δι’ αὐχένος ἤλυθ’ ἀκωκή
(Hom. Il. 22.317 27)

⁴¹ Ameis-Hentze rightly note that περὶ κροτάφοισι should be taken with καναχὴν ἔχε, not with
πήληξ.
⁴² See also n. 11 above. ⁴³ Zwaan (2004) 47 8.
   25

Like the Evening Star on its path among the stars in the darkness of the night, the
loveliest star set in the sky, such was the light gleaming from the point of the sharp
spear Achilleus held quivering in his right hand, as he purposed death for the godlike
Hektor, looking over his fine body to find the most vulnerable place. All the rest of his
body was covered with bronze armour, the fine armour he had stripped from mighty
Patroklos when he killed him. But flesh showed where the collar-bones hold the join of
neck and shoulders, at the gullet, where a man’s life is most quickly destroyed. Godlike
Achilleus drove in there with his spear as Hektor charged him, and the point went right
through his soft neck.
(trans. Hammond (1987))

After a detailed description of Achilles’ impressive appearance, the poet draws our
attention to the point of his spear. Its magnificent splendour is vividly evoked by
means of a simile in which it is likened to the beautiful Evening Star, a highly
salient image well known to the audience from life experience.⁴⁴ In the rest of the
passage, we also find some sensory details—Hector’s skin is beautiful,⁴⁵ his
armour is bronze and beautiful, his neck is soft—and detailed spatial information
in the form of preverbs (ἀπέλαμπ’, εἰσορόων), an adjective (δεξιτερῇ), an adverbial
clause (ᾗ κληῗδες ἀπ’ ὤμων αὐχέν’ ἔχουσι/λαυκανίην), an anaphoric adverb (τῇ),
prepositional phrases (ἐπὶ οἷ, δι’ αὐχένος), and an adverb (ἀντικρύ). As for the
dimension of time, the speed of the narration is low (scene narration); the simile
even suspends the progression of time completely.
An important feature contributing to the immersive experience is the switch to
character focalization, which is embedded by the verbs of perception εἰσορόων and
φαίνετο. From line 320 onwards, we see Hector’s body close up through Achilles’
eyes. Achilles visually scans Hector’s skin, notices that it is καλόν, and looks for the
spot which would be the most vulnerable for piercing with his spear. The rest of
his body is covered with the bronze armour. It is attractive to interpret the content
of the relative clause τὰ Πατρόκλοιο βίην ἐνάριξε κατακτάς as focalized by Achilles:
at the supreme moment of his revenge, he recalls how Hector obtained the
armour.⁴⁶ Then a weak spot on Hector’s body is revealed. The imperfect φαίνετο
‘was becoming visible’ (324) suggests that we are witnessing the appearance of the

⁴⁴ Note that the scholia comment that similes contribute to enargeia. In cognitive linguistics, similes
are analysed as conceptual blends of two cognitive domains: a specific element of the target domain
(Achilles’ lance) is enhanced by a perceptually salient element (or elements) selected from the source
domain (the brightness of the Evening Star), a typically concrete cognitive schema (frame, script) which
is part of our (experiential or cultural) world knowledge. The two input cognitive domains are accessed
simultaneously and integrated into a novel conceptual blend. For similes as conceptual blends, see
Dancygier and Sweetser (2014) 137 47. For a discussion of Homeric similes informed by cognitive
theory, see Minchin (2001) 132 60.
⁴⁵ ‘Beautiful’ is a rather generic feature that does not seem to be very immersive. However, a term
like ‘beautiful’ is specific enough to evoke a more concrete image in the hearer’s mind grounded in
previous experiences of beautiful skin. See also n. 16 above.
⁴⁶ See De Jong (1987) 87, 120.
26  . 

weak spot through the eyes of Achilles. Also the sensation that Hector’s neck is
soft can be ascribed to Achilles as he is penetrating the neck with his spear.⁴⁷
As in Homer, it is not difficult to find passages in Thucydides that show
immersive features. A typical example is the following passage from one of the
naval battles fought by Phormio:⁴⁸

(3) οἱ δ᾽ Ἀθηναῖοι κατὰ μίαν ναῦν τεταγμένοι περιέπλεον αὐτοὺς κύκλῳ καὶ ξυνῆγον
ἐς ὀλίγον, ἐν χρῷ αἰεὶ παραπλέοντες καὶ δόκησιν παρέχοντες αὐτίκα ἐμβαλεῖν
προείρητο δ᾽ αὐτοῖς ὑπὸ Φορμίωνος μὴ ἐπιχειρεῖν πρὶν ἂν αὐτὸς σημήνῃ. [2] ἤλπιζε
γὰρ αὐτῶν οὐ μενεῖν τὴν τάξιν, ὥσπερ ἐν γῇ πεζήν, ἀλλὰ ξυμπεσεῖσθαι πρὸς
ἀλλήλας τὰς ναῦς καὶ τὰ πλοῖα ταραχὴν παρέξειν, εἴ τ᾽ ἐκπνεύσειεν ἐκ τοῦ κόλπου
τὸ πνεῦμα, ὅπερ ἀναμένων τε περιέπλει καὶ εἰώθει γίγνεσθαι ἐπὶ τὴν ἕω, οὐδένα
χρόνον ἡσυχάσειν αὐτούς καὶ τὴν ἐπιχείρησιν ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτῷ τε ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι, ὁπόταν
βούληται, τῶν νεῶν ἄμεινον πλεουσῶν, καὶ τότε καλλίστην γίγνεσθαι. [3] ὡς δὲ τό
τε πνεῦμα κατῄει καὶ αἱ νῆες ἐν ὀλίγῳ ἤδη οὖσαι ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων, τοῦ τε ἀνέμου τῶν
τε πλοίων, ἅμα προσκειμένων ἐταράσσοντο, καὶ ναῦς τε νηὶ προσέπιπτε καὶ τοῖς
κοντοῖς διεωθοῦντο, βοῇ τε χρώμενοι καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀντιφυλακῇ τε καὶ
λοιδορίᾳ οὐδὲν κατήκουον οὔτε τῶν παραγγελλομένων οὔτε τῶν κελευστῶν, καὶ τὰς
κώπας ἀδύνατοι ὄντες ἐν κλύδωνι ἀναφέρειν ἄνθρωποι ἄπειροι τοῖς κυβερνήταις
ἀπειθεστέρας τὰς ναῦς παρεῖχον, τότε δὴ κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν τοῦτον σημαίνει,
καὶ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι προσπεσόντες πρῶτον μὲν καταδύουσι τῶν στρατηγίδων νεῶν
μίαν . . . (Thuc. 2.84.1 3)

[1] The Athenians, formed in line, sailed round and round them, and forced
them to contract their circle, by continually brushing past and making as though
they would attack at once, having been previously cautioned by Phormio not to
do so till he gave the signal. [2] His hope was that the Peloponnesians would not
retain their order like a force on shore, but that the ships would fall foul of one
another and the small craft cause confusion; and if the wind should blow from
the gulf (in expectation of which he kept sailing round them, and which usually
rose towards morning), they would not, he felt sure, remain steady an instant. He
also thought that it rested with him to attack when he pleased, as his ships were
better sailors, and that an attack timed by the coming of the wind would tell best.
[3] When the wind came down, the enemy’s ships were now in a narrow space,
and what with the wind and the small craft dashing against them, at once fell into
confusion: ship fell foul of ship, while the crews were pushing them off with
poles, and by their shouting, swearing and struggling with one another, made
captains’ orders and boatswains’ cries alike inaudible, and through being unable

⁴⁷ The immersive aspects of this scene have also been discussed in Allan, De Jong, and De Jonge (2014).
⁴⁸ This passage is also discussed by Rijksbaron (2012); Allan (2013); and Grethlein (2013b). Other
typical immersive battle narratives in Thucydides are: 4.31 8 (Sphacteria; see Allan (2013), (2018)),
7.59.3 60.1 and 7.69.3 71.7 (Great Harbour of Syracuse; see Bakker (1997b); Grethlein (2015b)).
   27

for want of practice to clear their oars in the rough water, prevented the vessels
from obeying their helmsmen properly. At this moment Phormio gave the signal,
and the Athenians attacked. Sinking first one of the admirals, . . . ⁴⁹

In 2.84.1, we are informed that Phormio had given the order to the Athenian ships
not to attack the Spartan ships before he had given the signal to do so. Thucydides
also provides Phormio’s motivation for this tactics (2.84.2), which is introduced
by the particle γάρ: Phormio expects that the Spartan ships would not keep their
orderly ranks and fall into confusion and that, if a wind arose from the gulf, they
would not be able to remain steady for long.⁵⁰ He also thinks that he could start
the attack whenever he pleased, since his ships were better. What we have here is
explicit embedded focalization. We have access to Phormio’s thoughts, and this
internal perspective is explicitly signalled by verbs of cognition (ἤλπιζε and
ἐνόμιζεν). Despite the internal perspective, however, this part of the narrative
lacks a number of qualities that would make it immersive. First, relatively few
perceptual details are provided that allow us to picture the situation envisaged by
Phormio. Second, Phormio’s order and its motivation are narrated as an analepsis
(cf. the use of the pluperfect προείρητο), thereby disturbing the natural chrono-
logical order of the narrative. Third, Phormio’s thoughts are represented in
indirect discourse (cf. ἤλπιζε and ἐνόμιζεν), a form of discourse representation
that draws attention to the mediated character of the narrative and is not
conducive to immersion.
The narrative continues in 2.84.3 with a long temporal-circumstantial subor-
dinate clause introduced by ὡς. From now on, the narrative acquires a more
immersive character, which crucially hinges on its more detailed description of
perceptual features and on the vantage point located within the scene.
With Rijksbaron,⁵¹ I interpret the content of the temporal-circumstantial
ὡς-clause as representing Phormio’s perception. Rijksbaron points out that
Phormio’s perception is prepared by Thucydides’ remark in 2.84.1 that the
Athenian ships are sailing at very close quarters to the Peloponnesian ships
(ἐν χρῷ αἰεὶ παραπλέοντες) so that he could hear and see everything happening
on the enemy’s side.⁵² Another more concrete indication, according to Rijksbaron,
that the ὡς-clause is focalized by Phormio is the fact that with circumstantial
ὡς-clauses preceding the main clause ‘the event of the main clause does not simply
“follow” . . . on that of the ὡς-clause, but forms a reaction to it; this reaction, in its
turn, is based upon an observation on the part of the subject of the main clause’.⁵³
It is not necessary, I would like to add, to assume that a reader will only

⁴⁹ The translations of Thucydides are from Crawley, revised by Strassler (1998).

⁵⁰ In Thucydides, γάρ often introduces a motivation focalized by a character ‘for (he thought that) . . . ’
(Hornblower (1994) 134. Cf. also De Jong (1987) 112).
⁵¹ See Rijksbaron (2012). ⁵² Rijksbaron (2012) 364. ⁵³ Rijksbaron (1976) 114 15.
28  . 

understand that the content of the ὡς-clause is perceived by the subject of the
main clause once the reader has reached the main clause and realizes in retrospect
that it describes the subject’s reaction to the state of affairs expressed in the
ὡς-clause. In Thucydides, virtually all preceding ὡς-clauses provide the motiv-
ation for a subsequent reaction of the subject of the main clause. It is, therefore,
very likely that the reader’s default expectation is that the content of the ὡς-clause
is focalized by the subject of the main clause.
The series of imperfects in the ὡς-clause (κατῄει, ἐταράσσοντο, προσέπιπτε,
διεωθοῦντο, κατήκουον, παρεῖχον (shown in bold)) refer to simultaneously occur-
ring (or partially overlapping) ongoing events or states that are viewed from an
internal temporal vantage point. Although a series of imperfects denoting simul-
taneous events or states does not necessarily imply character focalization (we may
also be dealing with a narrator registering the scene from a neutral ‘camera
standpoint’ within the scene), in this case the internal vantage point can be
plausibly identified with Phormio’s viewpoint.
The temporal and spatial organization of the narrative is similar to what we
have seen in passage (1). We follow Phormio’s visual and auditory perception
through the scene, starting with his observation that the wind he had been
expecting is indeed blowing, then focusing in on the ships that are (as expected)
being thrown into disorder, colliding with one another, being pushed away with
poles, and finally his observation that the crews are unable to understand their
captain’s order through their shouts and curses. The text also gives detailed
information about spatial arrangement and movement, in the form of preverbs
and prepositional adverbial phrases.⁵⁴ This is the opportunity Phormio has been
waiting for, and he gives the signal to attack and sink one of the generals’ ships.
At this point, the narration switches to the historic present tense (σημαίνει and
καταδύουσι (shown underscored)), a tense which also often features in immersive
narrative as it can be used to create the illusion of presence at the narrated events.
In Rijksbaron’s words, ‘[i]n historical narrative, such as that of Herodotus and
Thucydides, the effect is that of a “pseudo-witness”: the narrator poses as a
“reporter on the spot” ’.⁵⁵ As in the prototypical use of the present tense form,
the historic present signals that the time of the event is construed as simultaneous
with the time of speech (narration). In other words, the effect of the historic
present is that the normal spatio-temporal distance between the world of the

⁵⁴ Cf. κατῄει, ἐν ὀλίγῳ, προσκειμένων, προσέπιπτε, διεωθοῦντο, πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἐν κλύδωνι.

⁵⁵ It should be noted that this effect is not always fully detectable when a historic present is used: in
many cases, especially when an isolated verb is marked as a historic present, its function seems to have
been attenuated to a marker of salient events in the structure of the narrative, e.g., the start of an
episode, a change of location of a protagonist, or a crucial turning point in the narration; see also
Rijksbaron (2006) 22 5; Allan (2009), (2011a), (2011b). The present tense form in these cases does not
necessarily signal a ‘pseudo-presence’; rather, it signals that the event is of current relevance on the level
of the communication between narrator and narratee: the narratee should attend to the event as it is of
special importance to the understanding of the course of the narrative.
   29

narration and the storyworld is collapsed, and that the events in the storyworld
are now presented as being directly accessible to the experience of the narrator
and narratee.⁵⁶
The two tenses we find in this passage, the imperfect and the historic present,
are both capable, in their own way, of contributing to the reader’s feeling of
immersion. The fact that the imperfect is a past time signals that there is a
temporal distance between the time of narration and the time of the referent
state of affairs: the imperfect invokes a vantage point located in the past from
which the ongoing events or states are viewed.⁵⁷ The immersive effect of the
imperfect is reinforced if the vantage point is a story character with whom the
audience may identify, acting as a mediating consciousness through whom
the audience perceives and evaluates the scene.
The historic present, on the other hand, is a sign of immediacy. The distance
between the time of narration and story time is collapsed, and the narrated events
are presented as directly accessible to the experience of the narrator and narratee.
Since there is no mediating viewpoint through whom the scene is perceived, the
historic present is typically associated with narrator focalization.⁵⁸
Another semantic difference between imperfects and historic presents in
narrative is that imperfects express that the end point (telos) of the event had
not (yet) been reached. This makes the imperfect highly suitable for expressing
events that occur simultaneously with other events. Historic presents, on the
other hand, virtually always refer to telic events, that is, events that reach their
natural endpoint (telos). As a consequence, historic presents tend to refer to
subsequent events.
There is also a secondary narrative effect associated with the contrast between
narration in the imperfect and narration in the historic present. The relatively
slow narrative pace or even pause effected by the persistent use of the imperfect is
typically connected with a high degree of perceptual granularity: the narrative thus
suggests that the focalizer has time to observe the scene in all its sensory details.
Narration in the historic present, by contrast, typically highlights the occurrence
of a turning-point event, while the precise circumstances of the event are seen as
less relevant.

⁵⁶ For the characterization of the present tense as a marker of epistemic immediacy, see Langacker
(2008) 302 3, (2009) 185 212; Allan (2011a), (2013).
⁵⁷ The imperfect invokes a ‘displaced immediacy’, as Bakker (1997a) 37 calls it (a term borrowed
from Chafe). That this narrative situation does not occur in Homer, as Bakker claims, is incorrect.
Examples of this special narrative effect of the imperfect are: Il. 23.362 72 (chariot race, implicitly
focalized by watching public), Od. 5.59 73 (Calypso’s cave, implicitly focalized by Hermes),
Od. 7.88 131 (Alcinous’ palace, implicitly focalized by Odysseus; cf. Rijksbaron 2012). Such examples
pose a problem for Bakker’s idea ‘that oral epic memory is more a matter of “remembering” in a firmly
established speaker-now than of pretended observation in the past’ (Bakker (1997b) 37).
⁵⁸ That there is indeed a shift to narrator focalization is also suggested by the phrase κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν
τοῦτον, which elsewhere in Thucydides only occurs in narrator text (e.g. Thuc. 1.58.1, 6.61.2, 8.44.3, 8.87.1).
30  . 

3. Immersion versus Distance

In order to put the immersive narrative style into clear relief, it may be helpful to
examine a number of passages that appear to lack an immersive quality. The first
example is the proemium of the Iliad:

(4) Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί ’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή,
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
Τίς τάρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι;
(Hom. Il. 1.1 8)

Goddess, sing me the anger, of Achilles, Peleus’ son, that fatal anger that brought countless
sorrows on the Greeks, and sent many valiant souls of warriors down to Hades, leaving
their bodies as spoil for dogs and carrion birds: for thus was the will of Zeus brought to
fulfilment. Sing of it from the moment when Agamemnon, Atreus’ son, that king of men,
parted in wrath from noble Achilles. Which of the gods set these two to quarrel?

The proem lacks a number of crucial characteristics of immersive texts: first, the text
does not provide many sensory details and (except for Ἄϊδι) no clues of any specific
spatial setting. The events are not presented as perceived from an internal viewpoint
inside the storyworld, but as perceived from the retrospective viewpoint of the
narrator. The events referred to in the relative clause, specifying the effects of
Achilles’ wrath—it brought anguish to the Achaeans, hurled their souls into
Hades, made their bodies prey to dogs, thus fulfilling Zeus’s plan—are not chrono-
logically ordered in any clear way and they do not add up to a complete and
coherent narrative world. The narrator only mentions them in a summary fashion,
as an announcement of what is to come in the actual narrative, in order to incite the
audience’s emotional engagement and willingness to attend to the subsequent
narration. The chronological order is even reversed (a case of epic regression)
when the narrator turns to the cause of the wrath, the quarrel between Agamemnon
and Achilles, and then to the originator of the quarrel. Another important counter-
immersive property of the proem lies in the prominence of the narrator appealing to
the Muse. The audience’s attention is drawn to the mediating role of the narrator
and thus to the external setting of the narration, rather than to the storyworld.⁵⁹

⁵⁹ In a similar way, Thucydides’ proem as well as the following Archaeology and Methodenkapitel
feature a visible narrator and they represent the storyworld from a (relatively) distant point of view. The
   31

In the narrative proper of Iliad and Odyssey it is not so easy to find larger
stretches of text (that is, larger than an isolated summarizing line) that lack the
usual Homeric immersive quality. An example is the following passage:

(5) ἐννῆμαρ μὲν ἀνὰ στρατὸν ᾤχετο κῆλα θεοῖο,

τῇ δεκάτῃ δ᾽ ἀγορὴν δὲ καλέσσατο λαὸν Ἀχιλλεύς
τῷ γὰρ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη
κήδετο γὰρ Δαναῶν, ὅτι ῥα θνήσκοντας ὁρᾶτο.
(Hom. Il. 1.53 6)

For nine days the god’s arrows plied throughout the army. On the tenth day Achilleus
called the people to the assembly: the white-armed goddess Hera had put this in his
mind, as she cared for the Danaans when she saw them dying.
(trans. Hammond (1987))

These lines mark the transition from the account of the plague to the account of
the assembly. In these lines, ten days are summarized. There are very few
perceptual details (with the exception of the not very remarkable epithet λευκώ-
λενος). The spatial setting is only indicated in a general way (ἀνὰ στρατόν). The
natural chronological order is violated by the first γάρ-clause, which refers to
Hera’s prior action.
In Thucydidean narrative, it is less difficult to find non-immersive passages. An
example is the following from the closure of the Melian episode:

(6) καὶ ἐλθούσης στρατιᾶς ὕστερον ἐκ τῶν Ἀθηνῶν ἄλλης, ὡς ταῦτα ἐγίγνετο, ἧς
ἦρχε Φιλοκράτης ὁ Δημέου, καὶ κατὰ κράτος ἤδη πολιορκούμενοι, γενομένης καὶ
προδοσίας τινός, ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν ξυνεχώρησαν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ὥστε ἐκείνους περὶ αὐτῶν
βουλεῦσαι. οἱ δὲ ἀπέκτειναν Μηλίων ὅσους ἡβῶντας ἔλαβον, παῖδας δὲ καὶ γυναῖκας
ἠνδραπόδισαν τὸ δὲ χωρίον αὐτοὶ ᾤκισαν, ἀποίκους ὕστερον πεντακοσίους
πέμψαντες. (Thuc. 5.116.3 4)

Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the

command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously;
and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to
the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the
women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists
and inhabited the place themselves.

The massacre of the Melians is reported in a remarkably detached narrative style.

The passage does not provide any graphic details, indications of the spatial setting,

first moment in the narrative that can be said to be immersive is the moment when the Corcyraeans
speak to the Athenian assembly (1.32), which is represented as direct speech.
32  . 

or affective language. How much time passes between the various events remains
unspecified. No hint is given as to the intentions, considerations, or emotions of
the protagonists. The events are presented in a summary fashion from an external
retrospective narratorial perspective. The end of the Melians is brought to the
reader in a pointedly distanced and unsentimental way. One may wonder why
Thucydides switches to this bleak mode of narration, which is in its own way
highly effective. Is it to let the horrifying acts, by accounting them in a detached
way, ‘speak for themselves’? Is it to create a reflective distance between the events
and the reader? Or is the behaviour of the Athenians simply too grim to immerse
the reader in?
The final case I would like to discuss concerns the issue of the ‘double closure’
of the Sicilian episode, an issue which might profit from an approach in terms of
immersion and distance. In his commentary, Hornblower notes that there seem to
be two closures to the Sicilian narrative, both of which are cited in (7):

(7a) καὶ μὴν ἡ ἄλλη αἰκία καὶ ἡ ἰσομοιρία τῶν κακῶν, ἔχουσά τινα ὅμως τὸ μετὰ
πολλῶν κούφισιν, οὐδ’ ὣς ῥᾳδία ἐν τῷ παρόντι ἐδοξάζετο, ἄλλως τε καὶ ἀπὸ
οἵας λαμπρότητος καὶ αὐχήματος τοῦ πρώτου ἐς οἵαν τελευτὴν καὶ ταπεινότητα
ἀφῖκτο. μέγιστον γὰρ δὴ τὸ διάφορον τοῦτο [τῷ] Ἑλληνικῷ στρατεύματι ἐγένετο,
οἷς ἀντὶ μὲν τοῦ ἄλλους δουλωσομένους ἥκειν αὐτοὺς τοῦτο μᾶλλον δεδιότας μὴ
πάθωσι ξυνέβη ἀπιέναι, ἀντὶ δ᾽ εὐχῆς τε καὶ παιάνων, μεθ᾽ ὧν ἐξέπλεον, πάλιν
τούτων τοῖς ἐναντίοις ἐπιφημίσμασιν ἀφορμᾶσθαι, πεζούς τε ἀντὶ ναυβατῶν
πορευομένους καὶ ὁπλιτικῷ προσέχοντας μᾶλλον ἢ ναυτικῷ. ὅμως δὲ ὑπὸ μεγέθους
τοῦ ἐπικρεμαμένου ἔτι κινδύνου πάντα ταῦτα αὐτοῖς οἰστὰ ἐφαίνετο.
(Thuc. 7.75.6 7)

Moreover, their disgrace generally, and the universality of their sufferings,

however to a certain extent alleviated by being borne in company, were still felt
at the moment a heavy burden, especially when they contrasted the splendour
and glory of their setting out with the humiliation in which it had ended. For this
was by far the greatest reverse that ever befell an Hellenic army. They had come
to enslave others, and were departing in fear of being enslaved themselves: they
had sailed out with prayer and paeans, and now started to go back with omens
directly contrary; travelling by land instead of by sea, and trusting not in their
fleet but in their heavy infantry. Nevertheless, the greatness of the danger still
impending made all this appear tolerable.

(7b) ξυνέβη τε ἔργον τοῦτο [Ἑλληνικὸν] τῶν κατὰ τὸν πόλεμον τόνδε μέγιστον
γενέσθαι, δοκεῖν δ᾽ ἔμοιγε καὶ ὧν ἀκοῇ Ἑλληνικῶν ἴσμεν, καὶ τοῖς τε κρατήσασι
λαμπρότατον καὶ τοῖς διαφθαρεῖσι δυστυχέστατον [6] κατὰ πάντα γὰρ πάντως
νικηθέντες καὶ οὐδὲν ὀλίγον ἐς οὐδὲν κακοπαθήσαντες πανωλεθρίᾳ δὴ τὸ λεγόμενον
καὶ πεζὸς καὶ νῆες καὶ οὐδὲν ὅτι οὐκ ἀπώλετο, καὶ ὀλίγοι ἀπὸ πολλῶν ἐπ᾽ οἴκου
ἀπενόστησαν. ταῦτα μὲν τὰ περὶ Σικελίαν γενόμενα. (Thuc. 7.87.5 6)
   33

This was the greatest [Hellenic] achievement of any in this war, or, in my
opinion, in Hellenic history; at once most glorious to the victors, and most
calamitous to the conquered. They were beaten at all points and altogether; all
that they suffered was great; they were destroyed, as the saying is, with a total
destruction, their fleet, their army everything was destroyed, and few out of
many returned home. Such were the events in Sicily.

Hornblower notes that the second closure ‘duplicates the first in certain respects’,
pointing to verbal echoes such as μέγιστον and λαμπρότατον. The occurrence of a
second closure is, he further comments, ‘a not wholly logical concept’, and he
resorts to a shot in the dark by explaining the first passage as ‘perhaps closing a
recitation unit’.⁶⁰ Stahl, however, is critical about Hornblower’s connection
between the two passages and he stresses their differences. He points, on the
other hand, to a number of verbal echoes that link the first passage with the
account of the army’s departure from Athens (6.30–2).⁶¹
As I would like to argue here, there is also a crucial difference between the two
passages relating to a difference in immersive quality, more specifically, to a
difference in viewpoint. The first passage invites us to reflect on the disaster as
focalized by the Athenians at the moment they are experiencing it, while in the
second passage, the retrospective narrator’s voice is dominant.
That we are viewing the events from the Athenians’ viewpoint is signalled
in the first passage (7a.) by a number of linguistic features. First, in each of
the sentences in the passage mental verbs occur as explicit indications of
embedded focalization (ἐδοξάζετο, δεδιότας, ἐφαίνετο). The two imperfect
forms, ἐδοξάζετο and ἐφαίνετο, as well as the perfect form with aspectually
present meaning δεδιότας, suggest that the Athenians’ mental state is viewed
from an internal temporal perspective. Likewise, the future participle δουλω-
σομένους in the lengthy relative clause signals embedded focalization: it
expresses the intention with which the Athenians had come to Sicily. The
two present infinitives depending on ξυνέβη, ἀπιέναι and ἀφορμᾶσθαι (‘it befell
that they were going away and departing’) signal that these events are portrayed
as they are taking place. Also the imperfect ἐξέπλεον suggests in a subtle way
that the Athenians are recalling how they were sailing out from Athens saying
prayers and singing paeans (cf. 6.32).
At first glance, the statement μέγιστον γὰρ δὴ τὸ διάφορον τοῦτο [τῷ] Ἑλληνικῷ
στρατεύματι ἐγένετο (note the deviant aorist) seems to be a narratorial intrusion.
However, it is attractive to interpret it as (also) focalized by the Athenians. As
often in Thucydides, the γάρ-clause introduces material that is focalized by a
character specifying the character’s motivation for an action or an argument for
holding a belief. In this case, the γάρ-clause elaborates on the previous sentence in

⁶⁰ Hornblower (2008) ad 7.75.7 and 7.87.5 6. ⁶¹ Stahl (2009) 193.

34  . 

which the Athenians’ feelings of suffering and humiliation are described, feelings
that are reinforced through the contrast between their current state with the
splendour and glory with which they set out. The content of the γάρ-clause can
be ascribed to the Athenians’ thought: they realize that this has been the greatest
reverse that has ever occurred to a Hellenic army.
Despite Hornblower’s comment, the passage is not a narrative closure, not only
because the suspense is sustained rather than decreased (cf. ὑπὸ μεγέθους τοῦ
ἐπικρεμαμένου ἔτι κινδύνου), but also because the following section seamlessly
continues the flow of the narrative (ὁρῶν δὲ ὁ Νικίας τὸ στράτευμα ἀθυμοῦν καὶ ἐν
μεγάλῃ μεταβολῇ ὄν, . . . ).
In the second passage (7b.), by contrast, the narrator is prominently present
overseeing and evaluating from a retrospective viewpoint the whole complex of
events, referring both to the glory of the victors and to the suffering of the
vanquished. He even explicitly refers to himself: δοκεῖν δ᾽ ἔμοιγε καὶ ὧν ἀκοῇ
Ἑλληνικῶν ἴσμεν.⁶² The main tense used in the passage is the aorist (ξυνέβη
γενέσθαι, ἀπώλετο, and ἀπενόστησαν), whose bounded semantics tends to be
associated with an external retrospective viewpoint. In sum, while the first passage
invites us to be immersed in the narrative world, experiencing the situation
vicariously through the Athenians, the second passage takes a more distant,
holistic perspective with respect to the events.

4. Conclusion

The readerly experience of being immersed in the storyworld involves a wide

range of narrative techniques, including phenomena such as descriptions with
rich perceptual details, scenic spatial and temporal organization, deictic shifting,
character focalization, narratorial covertness, emotional engagement, empathy,
and the creation of suspense. There are several issues with regard to narrative
immersion which might be worth pursuing further, such as whether we can
observe a diachronic development of immersive techniques. Thucydides’ shifts
into (implicit) character focalization, for example, seem to be much more sus-
tained and to be showing greater complexity than the type of focalization that we
find in Homer.⁶³ Why is it that some narrators seem to be less concerned with (or
less capable of) achieving an immersive quality in their narrative? In what way

⁶² Note that throughout his work Thucydides consistently refers to the Peloponnesian War with a
proximal deictic pronoun ὅδε ὁ πόλεμος expressing that the war is at the centre of the attention of the
narrator (and narratee). This also explains why the first time the war is mentioned is not yet
accompanied by a deictic (1.1.1: τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων).
⁶³ For Homer, compare De Jong (1987) 121: ‘the secondarily focalized passages are short and in
comparison to direct speech far less frequent: character text is clearly the preferred mode of presen-
tation of the words and thereby of the thoughts/emotions of characters’.
   35

does their style differ precisely from ‘immersion-oriented’ narrators?⁶⁴ And,

finally, the presence of immersive features is not constant throughout a narrative.
Why do narrators show variation, aiming for immersion at some places in their
narrative, while switching to a more distanced style at others? The (admittedly,
highly selective) passages discussed in this chapter seem to point to a link between
immersion and plot structure in that they suggest—which is also intuitively very
plausible—that immersive narrative is more likely to occur at suspenseful turning
points (‘peaks’) in the narrative, while proems, digressions, and closures will tend
to be non-immersive.⁶⁵

⁶⁴ In Allan (2018) I discuss the difference in narrative styles between Herodotus’ account of the
battle of Thermopylae and Thucydides’ battle on Sphacteria in terms of immersive features.
⁶⁵ I would like to thank the editors of this volume for their valuable and insightful comments on an
earlier version of this chapter.
 2
The Allure of Narrative
in Greek Lyric Poetry
David Fearn

‘Allure’ is a basic defining characteristic of archaic Greek poetics. As Stephen

Halliwell has shown in detail, Homer begins what we know of archaic Greek
poetic self-definition with an implicit focus on the alluring qualities of song.

The semantics of ἵμερος [‘desire’ or ‘craving’], are often clearly erotic . . . When
applied to the qualities of song (or music and dance), in Homer as well as in
archaic Greek poetry more generally, the word-group captures a sense that this
realm of experience arouses and satisfies a strong impulse of attraction, a longing
to be drawn imaginatively into the world conjured up within the song.¹

Archaic and classical lyric, I suggest, has a particularly interesting relation with its
own alluring potential. What I want to consider here is the question of how lyric
figures itself as alluring; the senses in which this lyric allure is related to lyric’s
interest in narrative; and the consequences of these connections.
I show how archaic and classical lyric, across a range of styles and forms, shows
a deep interest in narrative. Yet, at the same time, a number of lyric’s own peculiar
qualities may be seen to work in tension with lyric’s narrativity. While lyric often
tempts its consumers by the prospect of narrative absorption, it frequently offsets
the complete fulfilment of this by foregrounding reflexivity instead—heightening
lyric experience as performed or readerly awareness of the charms of lyric texture,
and of lyric textuality. Indeed, at times lyric seems to flaunt the tensions in the
relation between narrative absorption and lyric self-reflexivity. This factor is
important for this volume as a whole because lyric so frequently demonstrates
that lyric’s alluring power is often to be located in the tension between absorption
into narrative flow and the punctuation of narrative flow by audience or readerly
awareness of the artificiality of narrative.
I reveal a range of takes on narrative as an experienced phenomenon across a
range of texts, and focus on narrativity and two aspects of lyric self-reflexivity in
particular: formal aspects of lyric texturing and structure; and lyric intertextuality.

¹ Halliwell (2011) 46 7.

David Fearn, The Allure of Narrative in Greek Lyric Poetry In: Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece
Edited by: Jonas Grethlein, Luuk Huitink, and Aldo Tagliabue, Oxford University Press (2020)
© Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848295.003.0003
        37

I provide readings of extracts from four diverse lyric poets: Stesichorus, Bacchylides,
Anacreon, and Pindar.
A subsidiary factor that this discussion raises is the significance of lyric’s
frequent featuring of erotic desire as a related issue. We will see that the various
ways in which lyric deals with the alluring possibility of narrative have at times an
important bearing on the thematization and articulation of erotic desire, and thus
the heightening of human awareness of the cultural centrality of emotional
experience. This is clear in sympotic erotic lyric, and becomes a vehicle for the
exploration of further issues by Pindar.
Discussion will be in three parts. In the first, I look at choral lyric narrative.
I investigate the ways Stesichorus and Bacchylides use narrative in lyric, and the
alluring interpretative challenges that the interaction, or indeed clash, between the
texture of lyric language and the progress of narrative flow raises.
In the second part, I focus on the sympotic monody of Anacreon. I investigate
how Anacreon’s poetic miniatures create evocations of distinctive worlds in which
stories of a variety of kinds can be imagined, whether or not Anacreon’s poetry
actually succeeds in creating coherent narratives of its own. As with the discussion
of choral lyric, the challenge of the interaction between literarity and world
creation is what makes Anacreon’s poetry so alluring and engrossing.
In the third part, I draw the strands of the discussion together, to show how
Pindar reflects on the archaic lyric traditions of both choral lyric and monody to
raise further questions about lyric narrativity in relation to a central issue of
epinician poetry: the accessibility to the worlds of the rich and famous that his
epinician poems seem, at first glance, to be granting.
In recent times, lyric scholarship has been beginning to turn its attention away
from an obsession with diagnosing lyric’s relation to its sociopolitical contexts.
Greater consideration is being paid to more formal consideration of the import-
ance of lyric’s modes of thought and expression as vehicles for continual cultural
engagement;² lyric poetics are once more being given the opportunity to be
reckoned with as a world-creating and empowering cultural phenomenon.³ At
the same time, theoretical work on the nature of lyric itself has been highlighting
how the peculiar predilections of lyric address work in tension with a sense of
lyric’s narrative temporality. Jonathan Culler, most prominently, has insistently
argued recently that lyric uses apostrophe to replace narrative temporality with
the temporality of the poetic event.⁴ With lyric in general, narrative incoherence
is a norm, rather than problem in need of a solution. ‘Lyric is bolder, more

² See, for instance, Sigelman (2016) on Pindar.

³ Payne (2006) and Fearn (2017) on Pindar; papers in Budelmann and Phillips (2018).
⁴ Culler (2015) ch. 5, ‘Lyric Address’: see in particular 229:‘Apostrophe resists narrative because its
“now” is not a moment in a temporal sequence but a special “now” of discourse: of writing and of poetic
enunciation’; ‘ . . . the replacement of a narrative temporality with temporality of the poetic event’.
38  

abrupt and disjunctive, in its treatment of the world; it displays more openly its
figuration, its rhetorical positing, in lieu of argument or demonstration.’⁵
We may find Culler’s views of the challenge to lyric narrative by the radically
different temporal potential of lyric apostrophe a little too strong. Yet it is interest-
ing to consider cases where lyric’s own structures of expression come face to face
with lyric’s occasional tendency towards narrative. As we will see throughout this
chapter, foregrounding language and mode of address often work in systematic
tension with the imaginative experience of coherent spaces in time through narra-
tive. Yet, paradoxically, this is what seems to make lyric poetry so engrossing. Such a
focus on the enchantment of ancient Greek poetics should not be considered as a
regressive move away from thinking about the politics of ancient Greek poetics, or,
even less, an anachronistic step away from a supposed immediacy of the connection
with contexts of performance that have dominated so many discussions of Greek
lyric over the last decades.⁶ The contemporary literary theorist Rita Felski has much
to offer on the significance of a focus on the enchantment of literary texts:

Enchantment matters because one reason that people turn to works of art is to be
taken out of themselves, to be pulled into an altered state of consciousness. While
much modern thought relegates such hyper-saturations of mood and feeling to the
realm of the child-like or the primitive, the accelerating interest in affective states
promises a less prejudicial and predetermined perspective. The experience of
enchantment is richer and more multi-faceted than literary theory has allowed; it
does not have to be tied to a haze of romantic nostalgia or an incipient fascism.
Indeed, enchantment may turn out to be an exceptionally fruitful idiom for rethink-
ing the tenets of literary theory. Once we face up to the limits of demystification as a
critical method and a theoretical ideal, once we relinquish the modern dogma that
our lives should become thoroughly disenchanted, we can truly begin to engage the
affective and absorptive, the sensuous and somatic qualities of aesthetic experience.⁷

There is an important sense in which ancient Greek lyric can be emblematic for
the value of studying classical literature in general. If lyric has an alluring power

⁵ Culler (2015) 351; cf. Culler (1981) 149.

⁶ In particular, we should be very wary of jettisoning the very term ‘lyric’, as, for instance, Claude
Calame has recently recommended, as if, by replacing it with the ancient term melos, we might be
somehow in a better position to be able to understand the functionality of ancient poetry’s claims on
audiences: Calame (2016) 291; cf. Calame (2006), (2009). While ancient performance culture is clearly a
highly significant aspect of lyric functionality, the performativity of ancient texts does not provide a
straight line to their meanings. Cf. Culler (2015) 118: ‘The notion of the performative has the great
virtue for a theory of literature of foregroundinglanguage as act rather than representation, but, beyond
that, the performative is the name of a problem, not a solution to the question of the status of literary
discourse.’ Calame appears worried that talk of ‘lyric’ rather than melos would lure critics into
regressive biographical readings of the lyric ‘I’, but this is unlikely. Further discussion of issues here
in Budelmann (2018) 2 7.
⁷ Felski (2008) 76.
        39

precisely because it resists theoretical pigeonholing as either completely transpar-

ent or knowingly artificial, coherent or disruptive, absorbing or inaccessible, then
so much the better.⁸ This is where its embedded cultural power and significance
can be assessed more successfully; indeed, ancient lyric ought to be granted back
its fundamental role in the shaping of the history of aesthetics.⁹ And I will be
arguing that it is ancient lyric’s confounding of such oppositions, across the widest
variety of poetic forms, from Stesichorean and Bacchylidean lyric expansiveness to
Anacreontic erotic terseness, that marks its enduring appeal, both for ancient
audiences and performers and for modern readers and critics.
With the predominance of narrative in the lyric of Stesichorus and Bacchylides,
the attention of lyric language to the particularity of detail in the mythical worlds
being constructed may be artfully at odds with the coherence of the narrative
flow.¹⁰ It is not simply a case of lyric ornamentation slowing down narrative flow.
Implicit questioning of narrative coherence may, in some ways, provide commen-
tary on the expressive limits of epic and specifically Homeric narrative: Homeric
intertextuality may be poetically absorbing; and it may at the same time be
performing important cultural work by allowing readers and audiences to reflect
on the nature of the textuality and its place within literary traditions. The upshot
relevant for the purposes of the present discussion is that Stesichorean and
Bacchylidean lyric narrativity draws particular attention to the texture of lyric
itself as a distinctive mode of expression. Again, such attention absorbs perform-
ers and audiences in the extraordinary worlds being created.
With the sympotic lyric of Anacreon, the terseness with which worlds of objects
are suggested is expressive of a tension for audiences and performers. This is a
tension between, on the one hand, the desire to be in that kind of world—to take
on the voice of a sympotically enraptured lover, wanting, through the revoicing of
that Anacreontic ‘I’, to succumb to the range of erotic feelings and sensations
offered up—and, on the other, the recognition of the representational mediation
of such experience. In Anacreon, the narrativity of erotic desire can also be
understood as a figure for the poems’ own desirability, their own charisma. The
attractiveness of erotic lyric representation opens up the relation between
imagined narrative scenarios of desire and the readerly and performative desire
to get into contact with those or experience them and bring them to life. Through
performance and reception, the literary texture of erotic power enacts the ongoing
construction of erotic experience, in the shaping of individual performers’ and

⁸ See Felski (2008) 73.

⁹ Cf. Grethlein (2015c) for a spirited argument in favour of the usefulness for current debates in
aesthetic theory of classical texts’ engagements with the absorbed consumption of their consumers.
Cf. Peponi (2012); it is a shame that neither Porter (2010) nor Halliwell (2011) has more space in their
important contributions for detailed treatment of lyric.
¹⁰ See Allan (Chapter 1 of this volume) and Tagliabue (Chapter 5 of this volume) for two other
studies showing that aesthetic experience is not limited to immersion in narrative flow.
Another random document with
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proportion—and, if we would but be true to our trust, in strength and
durability—finds no parallel in the world’s history.
“Patriotic sentiments, sir, such as marked the era of ’89, continued
to guide the statesmen and people of the country for more than thirty
years, full of prosperity; till in a dead political calm, consequent upon
temporary extinguishment of the ancient party lines and issues, the
Missouri Question resounded through the land with the hollow
moan of the earthquake, shook the pillars of the republic even to
their deep foundations.
“Within these thirty years, gentlemen, slavery as a system, had
been abolished by law or disuse, quietly and without agitation, in
every state north of Mason and Dixon’s line—in many of them,
lingering, indeed, in individual cases, so late as the census of 1840.
But except in half a score of instances, the question had not been
obtruded upon Congress. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 had been
passed without opposition and without a division, in the Senate; and
by a vote of forty-eight to seven, in the House. The slave trade had
been declared piracy punishable with death. Respectful petitions
from the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and others, upon the slavery
question, were referred to a committee, and a report made thereon,
which laid the matter at rest. Other petitions afterwards were quietly
rejected, and, in one instance, returned to the petitioner. Louisiana
and Florida, both slaveholding countries, had without agitation been
added to our territory. Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi,
and Alabama, slave states each one of them, had been admitted into
the Union without a murmur. No Missouri Restriction, no Wilmot
Proviso had as yet reared its discordant front to terrify and confound.
Non-intervention was then both the practice and the doctrine of
the statesmen and people of that period: though, as yet, no hollow
platform enunciated it as an article of faith, from which,
nevertheless, obedience might be withheld, and the platform ‘spit
upon,’ provided the tender conscience of the recusant did not forbid
him to support the candidate and help to secure the ‘spoils.’
“I know, sir, that it is easy, very easy, to denounce all this as a
defence of slavery itself. Be it so: be it so. But I have not discussed
the institution in any respect; moral, religious, or political. Hear me.
I express no opinion in regard to it: and as a citizen of the north, I
have ever refused, and will steadily refuse, to discuss the system in
any of these particulars. It is precisely this continued and persistent
discussion and denunciation in the North, which has brought upon
us this present most perilous crisis: since to teach men to hate, is to
prepare them to destroy, at every hazard, the object of their hatred.
Sir, I am resolved only to look upon slavery outside of Ohio, just as
the founders of the constitution and Union regarded it. It is no
concern of mine; none, none: nor of yours, Abolitionist. Neither of us
will attain heaven, by denunciations of slavery: nor shall we, I trow,
be cast into hell for the sin of others who may hold slaves. I have not
so learned the moral government of the universe: nor do I
presumptuously and impiously aspire to the attributes of Godhead;
and seek to bear upon my poor body the iniquities of the world.
“I know well indeed, Mr. President, that in the evil day which has
befallen us, all this and he who utters it, shall be denounced as ‘pro-
slavery;’ and already from ribald throats, there comes up the
slavering, drivelling, idiot epithet of ‘dough-face.’ Again, be it so.
These, Abolitionist, are your only weapons of warfare: and I hurl
them back defiantly into your teeth. I speak thus boldly, because I
speak in and to and for the North. It is time that the truth should be
known, and heard, in this the age of trimming and subterfuge. I
speak this day not as a northern man, nor a southern man; but, God,
be thanked, still as a United States man, with United States
principles;—and though the worst happen which can happen—
though all be lost, if that shall be our fate; and I walk through the
valley of the shadow of political death, I will live by them and die by
them. If to love my country; to cherish the Union; to revere the
Constitution: if to abhor the madness and hate the treason which
would lift up a sacrilegious hand against either; if to read that in the
past, to behold it in the present, to foresee it in the future of this
land, which is of more value to us and the world for ages to come,
than all the multiplied millions who have inhabited Africa from the
creation to this day:—if this it is to be pro-slavery, then, in every
nerve, fibre, vein, bone, tendon, joint and ligament, from the
topmost hair of the head to the last extremity of the foot, I am all
over and altogether a PRO-SLAVERY MAN.”
 Speech of Horace Greeley on the Grounds of
[84]
Protection.

Mr. President and Respected Auditors:—It has devolved on

me, as junior advocate for the cause of Protection, to open the
discussion of this question. I do this with less diffidence than I
should feel in meeting able opponents and practiced disputants on
almost any other topic, because I am strongly confident that you, my
hearers, will regard this as a subject demanding logic rather than
rhetoric, the exhibition and proper treatment of homely truths,
rather than the indulgence of flights of fancy. As sensible as you can
be of my deficiencies as a debater, I have chosen to put my views on
paper, in order that I may present them in as concise a manner as
possible, and not consume my hour before commencing my
argument. You have nothing of oratory to lose by this course; I will
hope that something may be gained to my cause in clearness and
force. And here let me say that, while the hours I have been enabled
to give to preparation for this debate have been few indeed, I feel the
less regret in that my life has been in some measure a preparation. If
there be any subject to which I have devoted time, and thought, and
patient study, in a spirit of anxious desire to learn and follow the
truth, it is this very question of Protection; if I have totally
misapprehended its character and bearings, then am I ignorant,
hopelessly ignorant indeed. And, while I may not hope to set before
you, in the brief space allotted me, all that is essential to a full
understanding of a question which spans the whole arch of Political
Economy,—on which able men have written volumes without at all
exhausting it—I do entertain a sanguine hope that I shall be able to
set before you considerations conclusive to the candid and unbiased
mind of the policy and necessity of Protection. Let us not waste our
time on non-essentials. That unwise and unjust measures have been
adopted under the pretence of Protection, I stand not here to deny;
that laws intended to be Protective have sometimes been injurious in
their tendency, I need not dispute. The logic which would thence
infer the futility or the danger of Protective Legislation would just as
easily prove all laws and all policy mischievous and destructive.
Political Economy is one of the latest born of the Sciences; the very
fact that we meet here this evening to discuss a question so
fundamental as this proves it to be yet in its comparative infancy.
The sole favor I shall ask of my opponents, therefore, is that they will
not waste their efforts and your time in attacking positions that we
do not maintain, and hewing down straw giants of their own
manufacture, but meet directly the arguments which I shall advance,
and which, for the sake of simplicity and clearness, I will proceed to
put before you in the form of Propositions and their Illustrations, as
follows:—
Proposition I. A Nation which would be prosperous, must
prosecute various branches of Industry, and supply its vital Wants
mainly by the Labor of its own Hands.
Cast your eyes where you will over the face of the earth, trace back
the History of Man and of Nations to the earliest recorded periods,
and I think you will find this rule uniformly prevailing, that the
nation which is eminently Agricultural and Grain-exporting,—which
depends mainly or principally on other nations for its regular
supplies of Manufactured fabrics,—has been comparatively a poor
nation, and ultimately a dependent nation. I do not say that this is
the instant result of exchanging the rude staples of Agriculture for
the more delicate fabrics of Art; but I maintain that it is the
inevitable tendency. The Agricultural nation falls in debt, becomes
impoverished, and ultimately subject. The palaces of “merchant
princes” may emblazon its harbors and overshadow its navigable
waters; there may be a mighty Alexandria, but a miserable Egypt
behind it; a flourishing Odessa or Dantzic, but a rude, thinly peopled
southern Russia or Poland; the exchangers may flourish and roll in
luxury, but the producers famish and die. Indeed, few old and
civilized countries become largely exporters of grain until they have
lost, or by corruption are prepared to surrender, their independence;
and these often present the spectacle of the laborer starving on the
fields he has tilled, in the midst of their fertility and promise. These
appearances rest upon and indicate a law, which I shall endeavor
hereafter to explain. I pass now to my
Proposition II. There is a natural tendency in a comparatively
new Country to become and continue an Exporter of Grain and
other rude Staples and an Importer of Manufactures.
I think I hardly need waste time in demonstrating this proposition,
since it is illustrated and confirmed by universal experience, and
rests on obvious laws. The new country has abundant and fertile soil,
and produces Grain with remarkable facility; also, Meats, Timber,
Ashes, and most rude and bulky articles. Labor is there in demand,
being required to clear, to build, to open roads, &c., and the laborers
are comparatively few; while, in older countries, Labor is abundant
and cheap, as also are Capital, Machinery, and all the means of the
cheap production of Manufactured fabrics. I surely need not waste
words to show that, in the absence of any counteracting policy, the
new country will import, and continue to import, largely of the
fabrics of older countries, and to pay for them, so far as she may,
with her Agricultural staples. I will endeavor to show hereafter that
she will continue to do this long after she has attained a condition to
manufacture them as cheaply for herself, even regarding the money
cost alone. But that does not come under the present head. The
whole history of our country, and especially from 1782 to ’90, when
we had no Tariff and scarcely any Paper Money,—proves that,
whatever may be the Currency or the internal condition of the new
country, it will continue to draw its chief supplies from the old,—
large or small according to its measure of ability to pay or obtain
credit for them; but still, putting Duties on Imports out of the
question, it will continue to buy its Manufactures abroad, whether in
prosperity or adversity, inflation or depression.
I now advance to my
Proposition III. It is injurious to the New Country thus to
continue dependent for its supplies of Clothing and Manufactured
Fabrics on the Old.
As this is probably the point on which the doctrines of Protection
first come directly in collision with those of Free Trade, I will treat it
more deliberately, and endeavor to illustrate and demonstrate it.
 I presume I need not waste time in showing that the ruling price of
Grain (as any Manufacture) in a region whence it is considerably
exported, will be its price at the point to which it is exported, less the
cost of such transportation. For instance: the cost of transporting
Wheat hither from large grain-growing sections of Illinois was last
fall sixty cents; and, New York being their most available market, and
the price here ninety cents, the market there at once settled at thirty
cents. As this adjustment of prices rests on a law obvious, immutable
as gravitation, I presume I need not waste words in establishing it.
I proceed, then, to my next point. The average price of Wheat
throughout the world is something less than one dollar per bushel;
higher where the consumption largely exceeds the adjacent
production, lower where the production largely exceeds the
immediate consumption (I put out of view in this statement the
inequalities created by Tariffs, as I choose at this point to argue the
question on the basis of universal Free Trade, which is of course the
basis most favorable to my opponents). I say, then, if all Tariffs were
abolished to-morrow, the price of Wheat in England—that being the
most considerable ultimate market of surpluses, and the chief
supplier of our manufactures—would govern the price in this
country, while it would be itself governed by the price at which that
staple could be procured in sufficiency from other grain-growing
regions. Now, Southern Russia and Central Poland produce Wheat
for exportation at thirty to fifty cents per bushel; but the price is so
increased by the cost of transportation that at Dantzic it averages
some ninety and at Odessa some eighty cents per bushel. The cost of
importation to England from these ports being ten and fifteen cents
respectively, the actual cost of the article in England, all charges
paid, and allowing for a small increase of price consequent on the
increased demand, would not in the absence of all Tariffs whatever,
exceed one dollar and ten cents per bushel; and this would be the
average price at which we must sell it in England in order to buy
thence the great bulk of our Manufactures. I think no man will
dispute or seriously vary this calculation. Neither can any reflecting
man seriously contend that we could purchase forty or fifty millions’
worth or more of Foreign Manufactures per annum, and pay for
them in additional products of our Slave Labor—in Cotton and
Tobacco. The consumption of these articles is now pressed to its
utmost limit,—that of Cotton especially is borne down by the
immense weight of the crops annually thrown upon it, and almost
constantly on the verge of a glut. If we are to buy our Manufactures
principally from Europe, we must pay for the additional amount
mainly in the products of Northern Agricultural industry,—that is
universally agreed on. The point to be determined is, whether we
could obtain them abroad cheaper—really and positively cheaper, all
Tariffs being abrogated—than under an efficient system of
Protection.
Let us closely scan this question. Illinois and Indiana, natural
grain-growing States, need cloths; and, in the absence of all tariffs,
these can be transported to them from England for two to three per
cent. of their value. It follows, then, that, in order to undersell any
American competition, the British manufacturer need only put his
cloths at his factory five per cent. below the wholesale price of such
cloths in Illinois, in order to command the American market. That is,
allowing a fair broadcloth to be manufactured in or near Illinois for
three dollars and a quarter per yard, cash price, in the face of British
rivalry, and paying American prices for materials and labor, the
British manufacturer has only to make that same cloth at three
dollars per yard in Leeds or Huddersfield, and he can decidedly
undersell his American rival, and drive him out of the market. Mind,
I do not say that he would supply the Illinois market at that price
after the American rivalry had been crushed; I know he would not;
but, so long as any serious effort to build up or sustain manufactures
in this country existed, the large and strong European
establishments would struggle for the additional market which our
growing and plenteous country so invitingly proffers. It is well
known that in 1815–16, after the close of the last war, British
manufactures were offered for sale in our chief markets at the rate of
“pound for pound,”—that is, fabrics of which the first cost to the
manufacturer was $4.44 were offered in Boston market at $3.33,
duty paid. This was not sacrifice—it was dictated by a profound
forecast. Well did the foreign fabricants know that their self-interest
dictated the utter overthrow, at whatever cost, of the young rivals
which the war had built up in this country, and which our
government and a majority of the people had blindly or indolently
abandoned to their fate. William Cobbett, the celebrated radical, but
with a sturdy English heart, boasted upon his first return to England
that he had been actively engaged here in promoting the interests of
his country by compassing the destruction of American
manufactories in various ways which he specified—“sometimes (says
he) by Fire.” We all know that great sacrifices are often submitted to
by a rich and long established stage owner, steamboat proprietor, or
whatever, to break down a young and comparatively penniless rival.
So in a thousand instances, especially in a rivalry for so large a prize
as the supplying with manufactures of a great and growing nation.
But I here put aside all calculations of a temporary sacrifice; I
suppose merely that the foreign manufacturers will supply our grain-
growing states with cloths at a trifling profit so long as they
encounter American rivalry; and I say it is perfectly obvious that, if it
cost three dollars and a quarter a yard to make a fair broadcloth in or
near Illinois in the infancy of our arts and a like article could be
made in Europe for three dollars, then the utter destruction of the
American manufacture is inevitable. The foreign drives it out of the
market and its maker into bankruptcy; and now our farmers, in
purchasing their cloths, “buy where they can buy cheapest,” which is
the first commandment of free trade, and get their cloth of England
at three dollars a yard. I maintain that this would not last a year after
the American factories had been silenced—that then the British
operator would begin to think of profits as well as bare cost for his
cloth, and to adjust his prices so as to recover what it had cost him to
put down the dangerous competition. But let this pass for the
present, and say the foreign cloth is sold to Illinois for three dollars
per yard. We have yet to ascertain how much she has gained or lost
by the operation.
This, says Free Trade, is very plain and easy. The four simple rules
of arithmetic suffice to measure it. She has bought, say a million
yards of foreign cloth for three dollars, where she formerly paid three
and a quarter for American; making a clear saving of a quarter of a
million dollars.
But not so fast—we have omitted one important element of the
calculation. We have yet to see what effect the purchase of her cloth
in Europe, as contrasted with its manufacture at home, will have on
the price of her Agricultural staples. We have seen already that, in
case she is forced to sell a portion of her surplus product in Europe,
the price of that surplus must be the price which can be procured for
it in England, less the cost of carrying it there. In other words: the
average price in England being one dollar and ten cents, and the
average cost of bringing it to New York being at least fifty cents and
then of transporting it to England at least twenty-five more, the net
proceeds to Illinois cannot exceed thirty-five cents per bushel. I need
not more than state so obvious a truth as that the price at which the
surplus can be sold governs the price of the whole crop; nor, indeed,
if it were possible to deny this, would it at all affect the argument.
The real question to be determined is, not whether the American or
the British manufacturers will furnish the most cloth for the least
cash, but which will supply the requisite quantity of Cloth for the
least Grain in Illinois. Now we have seen already that the price of
Grain at any point where it is readily and largely produced is
governed by its nearness to or remoteness from the market to which
its surplus tends, and the least favorable market in which any portion
of it must be sold. For instance: If Illinois produces a surplus of five
million bushels of Grain, and can sell one million of bushels in New
York, and two millions in New England, and another million in the
West Indies, and for the fifth million is compelled to seek a market in
England, and that, being the remotest point at which she sells, and
the point most exposed to disadvantageous competition, is naturally
the poorest market, that farthest and lowest market to which she
sends her surplus will govern, to a great extent if not absolutely, the
price she receives for the whole surplus. But, on the other hand, let
her Cloths, her wares, be manufactured in her midst, or on the
junctions and waterfalls in her vicinity, thus affording an immediate
market for her Grain, and now the average price of it rises, by an
irresistible law, nearly or quite to the average of the world. Assuming
that average to be one dollar, the price in Illinois, making allowance
for the fertility and cheapness of her soil, could not fall below an
average of seventy-five cents. Indeed, the experience of the periods
when her consumption of Grain has been equal to her production, as
well as that of other sections where the same has been the case,
proves conclusively that the average price of her Wheat would exceed
that sum.
We are now ready to calculate the profit and loss. Illinois, under
Free Trade, with her “workshops in Europe,” will buy her cloth
twenty-five cents per yard cheaper, and thus make a nominal saving
of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in her year’s supply; but,
she thereby compels herself to pay for it in Wheat at thirty-five
instead of seventy-five cents per bushel, or to give over nine and one
third bushels of Wheat for every yard under Free Trade, instead of
four and a third under a system of Home Production. In other words,
while she is making a quarter of a million dollars by buying her Cloth
“where she can buy cheapest,” she is losing nearly Two Millions of
Dollars on the net product of her Grain. The striking of a balance
between her profit and her loss is certainly not a difficult, but rather
an unpromising, operation.
Or, let us state the result in another form: She can buy her cloth a
little cheaper in England,—Labor being there lower, Machinery more
perfect, and Capital more abundant; but, in order to pay for it, she
must not merely sell her own products at a correspondingly low
price, but enough lower to overcome the cost of transporting them
from Illinois to England. She will give the cloth-maker in England
less Grain for her Cloth than she would give to the man who made it
on her own soil; but for every bushel she sends him in payment for
his fabric, she must give two to the wagoner, boatman, shipper, and
factor who transport it thither. On the whole product of her industry,
two-thirds is tolled out by carriers and bored out by Inspectors, until
but a beggarly remnant is left to satisfy the fabricator of her goods.
And here I trust I have made obvious to you the law which dooms
an Agricultural Country to inevitable and ruinous disadvantage in
exchanging its staples for Manufactures, and involves it in perpetual
and increasing debt and dependence. The fact, I early alluded to; is
not the reason now apparent? It is not that Agricultural communities
are more extravagant or less industrious than those in which
Manufactures or Commerce preponderate,—it is because there is an
inevitable disadvantage to Agriculture in the very nature of all
distant exchanges. Its products are far more perishable than any
other; they cannot so well await a future demand; but in their
excessive bulk and density is the great evil. We have seen that, while
the English Manufacturer can send his fabrics to Illinois for less than
five per cent. on their first cost, the Illinois farmer must pay two
hundred per cent. on his Grain for its transportation to English
consumers. In other words: the English manufacturer need only
produce his goods five per cent. below the American to drive the
latter out of the Illinois market, the Illinoisan must produce wheat
for one-third of its English price in order to compete with the English
and Polish grain-grower in Birmingham and Sheffield.
And here is the answer to that scintillation of Free Trade wisdom
which flashes out in wonder that Manufactures are eternally and
especially in want of Protection, while Agriculture and Commerce
need none. The assumption is false in any sense,—our Commerce
and Navigation cannot live without Protection,—never did live so,—
but let that pass. It is the interest of the whole country which
demands that that portion of its Industry which is most exposed to
ruinous foreign rivalry should be cherished and sustained. The
wheat-grower, the grazier, is protected by ocean and land; by the fact
that no foreign article can be introduced to rival his except at a cost
for transportation of some thirty to one hundred per cent. on its
value; while our Manufactures can be inundated by foreign
competition at a cost of some two to ten per cent. It is the grain-
grower, the cattle-raiser, who is protected by a duty on Foreign
Manufactures, quite as much as the spinner or shoemaker. He who
talks of Manufactures being protected and nothing else, might just as
sensibly complain that we fortify Boston and New York and not
Pittsburg and Cincinnati.
Again: You see here our answer to those philosophers who
modestly tell us that their views are liberal and enlightened, while
ours are benighted, selfish, and un-Christian. They tell us that the
foreign factory-laborer is anxious to exchange with us the fruits of his
labor,—that he asks us to give him of our surplus of grain for the
cloth that he is ready to make cheaper than we can now get it, while
we have a superabundance of bread. Now, putting for the present out
of the question the fact that, though our Tariff were abolished, his
could remain,—that neither England, nor France, nor any great
manufacturing country, would receive our Grain untaxed though we
offered so to take their goods,—especially the fact that they never did
so take of us while we were freely taking of them,—we say to them,
“Sirs, we are willing to take Cloth of you for Grain; but why prefer to
trade at a ruinous disadvantage to both? Why should there be half
the diameter of the earth between him who makes coats and him
who makes bread, the one for the other? We are willing to give you
bread for clothes; but we are not willing to pay two-thirds of our
bread as the cost of transporting the other third to you, because we
sincerely believe it needless and greatly to our disadvantage. We are
willing to work for and buy of you, but not to support the useless and
crippling activity of a falsely directed Commerce; not to contribute by
our sweat to the luxury of your nobles, the power of your kings. But
come to us, you who are honest, peaceable, and industrious; bring
hither your machinery, or, if that is not yours, bring out your sinews;
and we will aid you to reproduce the implements of your skill. We
will give you more bread for your cloth here than you can possibly
earn for it where you are, if you will but come among us and aid us to
sustain the policy that secures steady employment and a fair reward
to Home Industry. We will no longer aid to prolong your existence in
a state of semi-starvation where you are; but we are ready to share
with you our Plenty and our Freedom here.” Such is the answer
which the friends of Protection make to the demand and the
imputation; judge ye whether our policy be indeed selfish, un-
Christian, and insane.
I proceed now to set forth my
Proposition IV. That Equilibrium between Agriculture,
Manufactures and Commerce, which we need, can only be
maintained by means of Protective Duties.
You will have seen that the object we seek is not to make our
country a Manufacturer for other nations, but for herself,—not to
make her the baker and brewer and tailor of other people, but of her
own household. If I understand at all the first rudiments of National
Economy, it is best for each and all nations that each should mainly
fabricate for itself, freely purchasing of others all such staples as its
own soil or climate proves ungenial to. We appreciate quite as well as
our opponents the impolicy of attempting to grow coffee in
Greenland or glaciers in Malabar,—to extract blood from a turnip or
sunbeams from cucumbers. A vast deal of wit has been expended on
our stupidity by our acuter adversaries, but it has been quite thrown
away, except as it has excited the hollow laughter of the ignorant as
well as thoughtless. All this, however sharply pushed, falls wide of
our true position. To all the fine words we hear about “the
impossibility of counteracting the laws of Nature,” “Trade Regulating
itself,” &c., &c., we bow with due deference, and wait for the sage to
resume his argument. What we do affirm is this, that it is best for
every nation to make at home all those articles of its own
consumption that can just as well—that is, with nearly or quite as
little labor—be made there as anywhere else. We say it is not wise, it
is not well, to send to France for boots, to Germany for hose, to
England for knives and forks, and so on; because the real cost of
them would be less,—even though the nominal price should be
slightly more,—if we made them in our own country; while the
facility of paying for them would be much greater. We do not object
to the occasional importation of choice articles to operate as
specimens and incentives to our own artisans to improve the quality
and finish of their workmanship,—where the home competition does
not avail to bring the process to its perfection, as it often will. In such
cases, the rich and luxurious will usually be the buyers of these
choice articles, and can afford to pay a good duty. There are
gentlemen of extra polish in our cities and villages who think no coat
good enough for them which is not woven in an English loom,—no
boot adequately transparent which has not been fashioned by a
Parisian master. I quarrel not with their taste: I only say that, since
the Government must have Revenue and the American artisan
should have Protection, I am glad it is so fixed that these gentlemen
shall contribute handsomely to the former, and gratify their
aspirations with the least possible detriment to the latter. It does not
invalidate the fact nor the efficiency of Protection that foreign
competition with American workmanship is not entirely shut out. It
is the general result which is important, and not the exception. Now,
he who can seriously contend, as some have seemed to do, that
Protective Duties do not aid and extend the domestic production of
the articles so protected might as well undertake to argue the sun out
of the heavens at mid-day. All experience, all common sense,
condemn him. Do we not know that our Manufactures first shot up
under the stringent Protection of the Embargo and War? that they
withered and crumbled under the comparative Free Trade of the few
succeeding years? that they were revived and extended by the Tariffs
of 1824 and ’28? Do we not know that Germany, crippled by British
policy, which inundated her with goods yet excluded her grain and
timber, was driven, years since, to the establishment of her “Zoll-
Verein” or Tariff Union,—a measure of careful and stringent
Protection, under which Manufactures have grown up and flourished
through all her many States? She has adhered steadily, firmly, to her
Protective Policy, while we have faltered and oscillated; and what is
the result? She has created and established her Manufactures; and in
doing so has vastly increased her wealth and augmented the reward
of her industry. Her public sentiment, as expressed through its
thousand channels, is almost unanimous in favor of the Protective
Policy; and now, when England, finding at length that her cupidity
has overreached itself,—that she cannot supply the Germans with
clothes refuse to buy their bread,—talks of relaxing her Corn-Laws in
order to coax back her ancient and profitable customer, the answer
is, “No; it is now too late. We have built up Home Manufactures in
repelling your rapacity,—we cannot destroy them at your caprice.
What guarantee have we that, should we accede to your terms, you
would not return again to your policy of taking all and giving none so
soon as our factories had crumbled into ruin? Besides, we have found
that we can make cheaper—really cheaper—than we were able to buy,
—can pay better wages to our laborers, and secure a better and
steadier market for our products. We are content to abide in the
position to which you have driven us. Pass on!”
But this is not the sentiment of Germany alone. All Europe acts on
the principle of self-protection; because all Europe sees its benefits.
The British journals complain that, though they have made a show of
relaxation in their own Tariff, and their Premier has made a Free
Trade speech in Parliament, the chaff has caught no birds; but six
hostile Tariffs—all Protective in their character, and all aimed at the
supremacy of British Manufactures—were enacted within the year
1842. And thus, while schoolmen plausibly talk of the adoption and
spread of Free Trade principles, and their rapid advances to speedy
ascendency, the practical man knows that the truth is otherwise, and
that many years must elapse before the great Colossus of
Manufacturing monopoly will find another Portugal to drain of her
life-blood under the delusive pretence of a commercial reciprocity.
And, while Britain continues to pour forth her specious treatises on
Political Economy, proving Protection a mistake and an impossibility
through her Parliamentary Reports and Speeches in Praise of Free
Trade, the shrewd statesmen of other nations humor the joke with all
possible gravity, and pass it on to the next neighbor; yet all the time
take care of their own interests, just as though Adam Smith had
never speculated nor Peel soberly expatiated on the blessings of Free
Trade, looking round occasionally with a curious interest to see
whether anybody was really taken in by it.
 I have partly anticipated, yet I will state distinctly, my
Proposition V. Protection is necessary and proper to sustain as
well as to create a beneficent adjustment of our National Industry.
“Why can’t our Manufacturers go alone?” petulantly asks a Free-
Trader; “they have had Protection long enough. They ought not to
need it any more.” To this I answer that, if Manufactures were
protected as a matter of special bounty or favor to the
Manufacturers, a single day were too long. I would not consent that
they should be sustained one day longer than the interests of the
whole Country required. I think you have already seen that, not for
the sake of Manufacturers, but for the sake of all Productive Labor,
should Protection be afforded. If I have been intelligible, you will
have seen that the purpose and essence of Protection is Labor-
Saving,—the making two blades of grass grow instead of one. This it
does by “planting the Manufacturer as nearly as may be by the side of
the Farmer,” as Mr. Jefferson expressed it, and thereby securing to
the latter a market for which he had looked to Europe in vain. Now,
the market of the latter is certain as the recurrence of appetite; but
that is not all. The Farmer and the Manufacturer, being virtually
neighbors, will interchange their productions directly, or with but
one intermediate, instead of sending them reciprocally across half a
continent and a broad ocean, through the hands of many holders,
until the toll taken out by one after another has exceeded what
remains of the grist. “Dear-bought and far-fetched” is an old maxim,
containing more essential truth than many a chapter by a modern
Professor of Political Economy. Under the Protective policy, instead
of having one thousand men making Cloth in one hemisphere, and
an equal number raising Grain in the other, with three thousand
factitiously employed in transporting and interchanging these
products, we have over two thousand producers of Grain, and as
many of Cloth, leaving far too little employment for one thousand in
making the exchanges between them. This consequence is inevitable;
although the production on either side is not confined to the very
choicest locations, the total product of their labor is twice as much as
formerly. In other words, there is a double quantity of food, clothing,
and all the necessaries and comforts of life, to be shared among the
producers of wealth, simply from the diminution of the number of
non-producers. If all the men now enrolled in Armies and Navies
were advantageously employed in Productive Labor, there would
doubtless be a larger dividend of comforts and necessaries of life for
all, because more to be divided than now and no greater number to
receive it; just so in the case before us. Every thousand persons
employed in needless Transportation and in factitious Commerce are
so many subtracted from the great body of Producers, from the
proceeds of whose labor all must be subsisted. The dividend for each
must, of course, be governed by the magnitude of the quotient.
But, if this be so advantageous, it is queried, why is any legislation
necessary? Why would not all voluntarily see and embrace it? I
answer, because the apparent individual advantage is often to be
pursued by a course directly adverse to the general welfare. We know
that Free Trade asserts the contrary of this; maintaining that, if every
man pursues that course most conducive to his individual interest,
the general good will thereby be most certainly and signally
promoted. But, to say nothing of the glaring exceptions to this law
which crowd our statute books with injunctions and penalties, we are
everywhere met with pointed contradictions of its assumption, which
hallows and blesses the pursuits of the gambler, the distiller, and the
libertine, making the usurer a saint and the swindler a hero. Adam
Smith himself admits that there are avocations which enrich the
individual but impoverish the community. So in the case before us. A
B is a farmer in Illinois, and has much grain to sell or exchange for
goods. But, while it is demonstrable that, if all the manufactures
consumed in Illinois were produced there, the price of grain must
rise nearly to the average of the world, it is equally certain that A B’s
single act, in buying and consuming American cloth, will not raise
the price of grain generally, nor of his grain. It will not perceptibly
affect the price of grain at all. A solemn compact of the whole
community to use only American fabrics would have some effect; but
this could never be established, or never enforced. A few Free-
Traders standing out, selling their grain at any advance which might
accrue, and buying “where they could buy cheapest,” would induce
one after another to look out for No. 1, and let the public interests
take care of themselves: so the whole compact would fall to pieces
like a rope of sand. Many a one would say, “Why should I aid to keep
up the price of Produce? I am only a consumer of it,”—not realizing
or caring for the interest of the community, even though it less
palpably involved his own; and that would be an end. Granted that it
is desirable to encourage and prefer Home Production and
Manufacture, a Tariff is the obvious way, and the only way, in which
it can be effectively and certainly accomplished.
But why is a Tariff necessary after Manufactures are once
established? “You say,” says a Free-Trader, “that you can
Manufacture cheaper if Protected than we can buy abroad: then why
not do it without Protection, and save all trouble?” Let me answer
this cavil:—
I will suppose that the Manufactures of this Country amount in
value to One Hundred Millions of Dollars per annum, and those of
Great Britain to Three Hundred Millions. Let us suppose also that,
under an efficient Protective Tariff, ours are produced five per cent.
cheaper than those of England, and that our own markets are
supplied entirely from the Home Product. But at the end of this year,
1843, we,—concluding that our Manufactures have been protected
long enough and ought now to go alone,—repeal absolutely our
Tariff, and commit our great interests thoroughly to the guidance of
“Free Trade.” Well: at this very time the British Manufacturers, on
making up the account and review of their year’s business, find that
they have manufactured goods costing them Three Hundred
Millions, as aforesaid, and have sold to just about that amount,
leaving a residue or surplus on hand of Fifteen or Twenty Millions’
worth. These are to be sold; and their net proceeds will constitute the
interest on their capital and the profit on their year’s business. But
where shall they be sold? If crowded on the Home or their
established Foreign Markets, they will glut and depress those
markets, causing a general decline of prices and a heavy loss, not
merely on this quantity of goods, but on the whole of their next year’s
business. They know better than to do any such thing. Instead of it,
they say, “Here is the American Market just thrown open to us by a
repeal of their Tariff: let us send thither our surplus, and sell it for
what it will fetch.” They ship it over accordingly, and in two or three
weeks it is rattling off through our auction stores, at prices first five,
then ten, fifteen, twenty, and down to thirty per cent. below our
previous rates. Every jobber and dealer is tickled with the idea of
buying goods of novel patterns so wonderfully cheap; and the sale
proceeds briskly, though, at constantly declining prices, till the whole
stock is disposed of and our market is gorged to repletion.
 Now, the British manufacturers may not have received for the
whole Twenty Millions’ worth of Goods over Fourteen or Fifteen
Millions; but what of it? Whatever it may be is clear profit on their
year’s business in cash or its full equivalent. All their established
markets are kept clear and eager; and they can now go on vigorously
and profitably with the business of the new year. But more: they have
crippled an active and growing rival; they have opened a new market,
which shall erelong be theirs also.
Let us now look at our side of the question:—
The American Manufacturers have also a stock of goods on hand,
and they come into our market to dispose of them. But they suddenly
find that market forestalled and depressed by rival fabrics of
attractive novelty, and selling in profusion at prices which rapidly
run down to twenty-five per cent. below cost. What are they to do?
They cannot force sales at any price not utterly ruinous; there is no
demand at any rate. They cannot retaliate upon England the mischief
they must suffer,—her Tariff forbids; and the other markets of the
world are fully supplied, and will bear but a limited pressure. The
foreign influx has created a scarcity of money as well as a plethora of
goods. Specie has largely been exported in payment, which has
compelled the Banks to contract and deny loans. Still, their
obligations must be met; if they cannot make sales, the Sheriff will,
and must. It is not merely their surplus, but their whole product,
which has been depreciated and made unavailable at a blow. The end
is easily foreseen: our Manufacturers become bankrupt and are
broken up; their works are brought to a dead stand; the Laborers
therein, after spending months in constrained idleness, are driven by
famine into the Western wilderness, or into less productive and less
congenial vocations; their acquired skill and dexterity, as well as a
portion of their time, are a dead loss to themselves and the
community; and we commence the slow and toilsome process of
rebuilding and rearranging our industry on the one-sided or
Agricultural basis. Such is the process which we have undergone
twice already. How many repetitions shall satisfy us?
Now, will any man gravely argue that we have made Five or Six
Millions by this cheap purchase of British goods,—by “buying where
we could buy cheapest?” Will he not see that, though the price was
low, the cost is very great? But the apparent saving is doubly
deceptive; for the British manufacturers, having utterly crushed their
American rivals by one or two operations of this kind, soon find here
a market, not for a beggarly surplus of Fifteen or Twenty Millions,
but they have now a demand for the amount of our whole
consumption, which, making allowance for our diminished ability to
pay, would probably still reach Fifty Millions per annum. This
increased demand would soon produce activity and buoyancy in the
general market; and now the foreign Manufacturers would say in
their consultations, “We have sold some millions’ worth of goods to
America for less than cost, in order to obtain control of that market;
now we have it, and must retrieve our losses,”—and they would
retrieve them, with interest. They would have a perfect right to do so.
I hope no man has understood me as implying any infringement of
the dictates of honesty on their part, still less of the laws of trade.
They have a perfect right to sell goods in our markets on such terms
as we prescribe and they can afford; it is we, who set up our own vital
interests to be bowled down by their rivalry, who are alone to be
blamed.
Who does not see that this sending out our great Industrial
Interests unarmed and unshielded to battle against the mailclad
legions opposed to them in the arena of Trade is to insure their
destruction? It were just as wise to say that, because our people are
brave, therefore they shall repel any invader without fire-arms, as to
say that the restrictions of other nations ought not to be opposed by
us because our artisans are skilful and our manufactures have made
great advances. The very fact that our manufactures are greatly
extended and improved is the strong reason why they should not be
exposed to destruction. If they were of no amount or value, their loss
would be less disastrous; but now the Five or Six Millions we should
make on the cheaper importation of goods would cost us One
Hundred Millions in the destruction of Manufacturing Property
alone.
Yet this is but an item of our damage. The manufacturing classes
feel the first effect of the blow, but it would paralyze every muscle of
society. One hundred thousand artisans and laborers, discharged
from our ruined factories, after being some time out of employment,
at a waste of millions of the National wealth, are at last driven by
famine to engage in other avocations,—of course with inferior skill
and at an inferior price. The farmer, gardener, grocer, lose them as
customers to meet them as rivals. They crowd the labor-markets of
those branches of industry which we are still permitted to pursue,
just at the time when the demand for their products has fallen off,
and the price is rapidly declining. The result is just what we have
seen in a former instance: all that any man may make by buying
Foreign goods cheap, he loses ten times over by the decline of his
own property, product, or labor; while to nine-tenths of the whole
people the result is unmixed calamity. The disastrous consequences
to a nation of the mere derangement and paralysis of its Industry
which must follow the breaking down of any of its great Producing
Interests have never yet been sufficiently estimated. Free Trade,
indeed, assures us that every person thrown out of employment in
one place or capacity has only to choose another; but almost every
workingman knows from experience that such is not the fact,—that
the loss of situation through the failure of his business is oftener a
sore calamity. I know a worthy citizen who spent six years in learning
the trade of a hatter, which he had just perfected in 1798, when an
immense importation of foreign hats utterly paralyzed the
manufacture in this country. He traveled and sought for months, but
could find no employment at any price, and at last gave up the
pursuit, found work in some other capacity, and has never made a
hat since. He lives yet, and now comfortably, for he is industrious
and frugal; but the six years he gave to learn his trade were utterly
lost to him,—lost for the want of adequate and steady Protection to
Home Industry. I insist that the Government has failed of
discharging its proper and rightful duty to that citizen and to
thousands, and tens of thousands who have suffered from like
causes. I insist that, if the Government had permitted without
complaint a foreign force to land on our shores and plunder that
man’s house of the savings of six years of faithful industry, the
neglect of duty would not have been more flagrant. And I firmly
believe that the people of this country are One Thousand Millions of
Dollars poorer at this moment than they would have been had their
entire Productive Industry been constantly protected, on the
principles I have laid down, from the formation of the Government
till now. The steadiness of employment and of recompense thus
secured, the comparative absence of constrained idleness, and the
more efficient application of the labor actually performed, would