Independent Researcher

Dr.

Classics

Thesis Title: Space in Greek Lyric

About

From the end of the twentieth century onwards space has become a ‘hot topic’ in literary studies. This ‘spatial turn’ has also affected the study of ancient Greek literature . Currently, several projects run on space in ancient Greek literature. One of these is led by Professor Irene de Jong of the University of Amsterdam, who devotes the third volume of her series Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative to space (fortch.). My PhD thesis formed part of this project, as it focuses on the literary presentation of space in archaic Greek lyric. So far, archaic Greek lyric has been studied for its dialects and metrical systems, or to come to a better understanding of early Greek history and society, or from a general, literary perspective. At present, the focus lies on the performance context, including the places where the lyric poems were performed. However, the role of intratextual space within the poems is largely neglected: this was the subject of my PhD-thesis. The question was how to approach such a complex and many-sided concept as space. I focused on spatial ‘types’, i.e. city, countryside and sea, because these types of space are much understudied: no in-depth study had been done on the city in Greek lyric, and studies on the countryside and the sea required updating. My central research question concerned the role space has in lyric poems. Therefore, a theoretical framework inspired by narratology, phenomenology and metaphor theory was developed in the first chapter. Generally speaking, I distinguished between a role as setting or frame and a symbolic role (symbolic associations and metaphor, including personification). This theoretical framework was applied in three subsequent chapters on the city (chapter two), the countryside (chapter three) and the sea (chapter four), in which I offered detailed readings of 32 lyric poems. I argued that space predominantly has a symbolic role: the city is a political and an erotic metaphor, the countryside has erotic associations, and the sea has associations with danger. In an epilogue I attempted to bring the symbolic role of space in connection with the performance context of the symposium, in which these poems were performed: city metaphors are connected with sympotic plays of 'guessing', the erotic symbolism of the countryside reveals a projection of the erotic fantasies of the sympotic group, and the symbolism of danger of the sea serves to reinforce the cohesion of the sympotic group.

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