Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Apollonios de Rhodes'

Texte remanié de: Doktorarbeit--Groningen--Rijksuniversiteit, 2002.
Contient le texte grec du livre 1, 23-233 (Argonautenkatalog) et du livre 2, 311-425 (Weissagung des Phineus) des Argonautiques, ainsi que leur traduction allemande. Bibliogr. p. [223]-232.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Cambridge, 1990. Titre de soutenance : Prósthen ̉éti kleíousin áoidoí : responses to Homer in the Argonautica of Apollonius.
Titre de la thèse translittéré selon la norme ISO 843 (1997). Bibliogr. p. 306-317. Index. Glossaire.

Cette thèse propose une synthèse autour des différents rôles de la lumière et de l'obscurité dans les Argonautiques d'Apollonios de Rhodes. Ce sujet comporte une forte composante lexicale, qui fait l'objet d'une étude dans la première partie, où les vocabulaires de la lumière et de l'obscurité chez Apollonios sont comparés aux emplois homériques. Ce thème interroge également les catégories de l'espace et du temps dans la mesure où lumière et obscurité structurent la narration autant qu'elles la déstructurent et proposent un itinéraire placé à la croisée de la barbarie et de la civilisation, état d'entre-deux qui reflète bien les craintes de l'époque alexandrine. La dialectique de la lumière et de l'obscurité permet aussi de mettre en perspective la notion d'héroïsme placée au cœur de l'épopée : la brillance des armes homériques fait alors place à l'éclat de la séduction, arme principale de Jason dont la valeur se mesure surtout dans le domaine érotique. Ce transfert des valeurs traditionnelles de la lumière sur le plan masculin s'accompagne d'une affirmation des pouvoirs féminins en contexte nocturne. Une quatrième partie interroge enfin le statut littéraire des Argonautiques à l'aune de la dialectique entre lumière et obscurité : l'épopée au long cours dénigrée par Callimaque peut en effet être lue comme un recueil poétique de pièces autonomes et une galerie de tableaux correspondant aux canons de l'esthétique hellénistique. Le dieu Apollon, dieu de la lumière et de la poésie placé au centre de l'oeuvre d'Apollonios, se fait le porte-parole privilégié d'un auteur au nom si proche du sien et devient le destinataire d'une sorte d'hymne atomisé qui mêle célébration poétique et réflexions métapoétiques
Through this thesis, we aim to prove the various roles played by light and darkness in Apollonius Rhodius'Argonautica. In the first part, a lexical study specifically explores the terms expressing the ideas of light and darkness, in comparison to the Homeric references. Our thematic also tackles the issue of the construction of space and time, a notorious one in the Hellenistic period. The epic's structure is indeed based on the light and darkness' duality, but the threat of darkness symbolizing chaos is never far from the Argonauts who constantly struggle with barbarians and on the contrary symbolize Greek enlightment and civilization. The light and darkness'couple also allows us to give a new perspective on heroism, which is a central issue in Apollonius'poem. Whereas Homeric warriors project martial light due to their armour's glistening, Jason appears as love-hero shining with his purple cloak, an Hellenistic artefact replacing Achilles'shield described in the Iliad. At the same time, we can observe a kind of empowerment on the feminine side during the scenes occuring at night. In the fourth and last part, light and darkness endorse a metapoetical value, as they build a new kind of epic, like a collection of brief literary pieces joined together by a common celebration of Apollo, god of both poetry and light. Apollonius'Argonautica can therefore be seen as a prefiguration of Philostratus'Imagines, as it is built around a succession of vivid poetical paintings

Ce travail consiste à étudier les procédés employés par l'auteur pour le traitement des mythes, et à montrer que l'écriture des mythes ne se limite pas chez lui à un jeu d'érudit, mais qu'elle est au service d'une certaine vision du monde. L'étude du traitement des sources nous permet de mesurer l'attitude de distance de l'auteur à l'égard de la tradition, et d'éclairer sa manière de travailler le matériau légendaire : en opérant des synthèses et en combinant des éléments hétérogènes, il transforme le récit d'une légende en une somme mythologique. Par un travail sur le temps du mythe, il s'efforce en outre d'historiciser la légende, et de recréer, grâce à l'étiologie, une continuité entre le temps passé et le temps présent. Des rapprochements entre la geste argonautique et d'autres mythes lui permettent enfin de faire écho à de nombreux textes célèbres et visent à transformer son poème en une somme littéraire, une sorte d'« oeuvre totale », tout en l'inscrivant dans le corpus des œuvres de référence. L'épopée d'Apollonios traduit pourtant une vision du monde très différente de celle qui prévaut chez les auteurs des périodes précédentes. Cette vision transparaît en particulier dans la représentation des dieux et de leurs rapports avec les hommes. L'étude de leurs apparitions dans le texte montre que les interventions des dieux ne structurent plus l'action chez Apollonios comme c'était le cas chez Homère. L'auteur donne d'eux une image plus distante et plus imposante en s'inspirant de techniques empruntées aux arts plastiques. Les dieux sont essentiellement chez lui objets de culte : ce sont des idoles. Il se réfère, pour les représenter, à des types célèbres de la peinture et de la statuaire. Il utilise en outre des échelles différentes pour représenter les mondes humain et divin, comme sur certaines stèles de l'époque hellénistique : par comparaison avec les dieux, l'humanité apparaît ainsi dérisoire
This study deals with the processes used by Apollonius for the treatment of the myths ; it tries to demonstrate that, in the Argonautica, the writing of the myths is not only a matter for scholarship but also reveals a particular vision of the world. Firstly, by studying the treatment of the mythological sources, we show how the author keeps distance from tradition, and enlighten the nature of his work on the legendary material, in particular the manner in which he combines different texts in order to compose one myth, and tries both to give the story a rational temporality and to recreate a continuity between the past and die present by using etiology. Secondly, we show that the manner in which Apollonius relates myths reflects a vision of the world quite different from those of his predecessors. This vision particularly appears through the representation of the gods, whose relationship to the humankind is becoming problematical in the Argonautica. Their plans do not structure the action as they did in the Homeric Epics and their interventions in the story are more rare and incongruous. Their images have changed as well. Apollonius' divinities resemble to their cultual statues. The author also use different levels to represent the gods and the heroes, as in certain votive reliefs of the Hellenistic period. This process allows him to enlighten the great distance between them

Il est reconnu que la poésie hellénistique a donné à l’expression du sentiment amoureux une importance inédite, mais la rupture que constitue ce fait littéraire par rapport aux œuvres du passé n’a cependant pas toujours été suffisamment mise en avant. Cette étude propose donc d’examiner les spécificités de cette représentation de l’amour et de montrer qu’elle ressortit principalement au registre pathétique. Ainsi, dans une perspective diachronique, elle s’attache tout d’abord à rappeler les particularités de la représentation de l’amour dans la poésie des époques archaïque et classique, et à montrer notamment le rôle secondaire qu’y tient cette thématique. Puis, après avoir analysé les caractéristiques, complexes mais toujours éminemment négatives, que les poètes hellénistiques attribuent à l’amour, essentiellement réduit pour eux à l’ἔρως, elle examine les modalités précises de son expression pathétique, une innovation importante grâce à laquelle la thématique amoureuse a pu accéder en littérature au rang d’un véritable sentiment. Cette étude permet enfin de montrer que la représentation pathétique du sentiment amoureux est l’une des clefs pour comprendre plusieurs caractéristiques et enjeux fondamentaux de la poésie hellénistique, à propos de laquelle il convient de parler d’une véritable poétique de l’amour. En effet, le pathétique amoureux peut s’y lire comme un paradigme méta-poétique qui ne reflète pas seulement les nouvelles valeurs esthétiques de l’époque hellénistique mais également les conditions, inédites, de création et de réception des œuvres littéraires, en particulier dans leurs rapports, aussi étroits qu’ambigus, aux cours royales et à la tradition
Hellenistic poetry attributed an importance to love never encountered in poetry before. This literary break with the past has only ever received scant attention. This study sets out to examine the specifics of how love was represented and to show how it essentially emerges from the pathetic register. From a diachronic perspective, the study aims to focus on the particular characteristics of the representation of love in the poetry of the classical and archaic periods, and above all demonstrate the secondary role the theme was accorded. After an analysis of the complex, but always eminently negative, characteristics, attributed to love by Hellenistic poets, which, to them, is essentially reduced to ἔρως, the study examines the precise modalities of its expression through pathos, an important innovation through which the theme of love became recognised as a genuine feeling in literature. This study ultimately enables us to show that the pathetic representation of love is one of the keys to understanding several characteristics and fundamental issues of Hellenistic poetry, through a genuine poetics of love. Romantic pathos can indeed be interpreted here as a meta-poetic paradigm which does not only reflect the new aesthetic values of the Hellenistic age but also the new conditions of creation and reception of literary works, in particular in their close and ambiguous relationships with royal courts and tradition

In this thesis, Hospitality in Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica Books One and Two, I offer a detailed and systematic analysis of the epic motifs used by Apollonius Rhodius. Careful comparison with its principal models, the Homeric epics, shows the poet's sophisticated manipulation of the Iliad and Odyssey, and reveals much of his narrative technique. Read in the context of its sources, it is possible to focus with more precision on Apollonius' innovations. For this study, I have selected the major hospitality scenes of the first two books, which are concerned with the outward journey to Colchis. Reference is, however, made throughout to the hospitality scenes in Books Three and Four. The hospitality theme is one of the most important in an epic concerning the voyage heroes make in order to retrieve the Golden Fleece. Hospitality scenes are characterised by a certain repetition of motifs: e.g. arrival, reception, meal, storytelling and exchange of gifts. These elements are always adapted according to the particular poetic context and purpose of a scene. With their elaborate structure hospitality scenes provide fascinating material for the study of the reworking of the Homeric epics, crucial for the understanding of Apollonius' work.

This thesis is a study of the influence of cosmology on Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, an epic hexameter poem written in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. I examine ancient Greek ideas of cosmogony and cosmology, which range from the earliest extant Greek texts (Homer and Hesiod) to contemporaries of Apollonius (Aratus). My argument is that cosmology is deeply embedded in the text, and that Apollonius creates a nexus of cosmic intertexts which provides a scientific and intellectual backdrop against which the events of the narrative take place. The narrative’s events all occur within a cosmos, which is alluded to throughout the epic; the reader sees snap-shots of the development of this cosmos alongside the development of the Argo’s journey, which creates an analogous progression between the two. Particularly salient for this thesis is the connection to Empedoclean ideas of love and strife as cosmic forces, as these comprise two of the major themes of the narrative. Accordingly, a key point of contact between narrative and cosmology lies in these forces, as the narrator consciously recalls them and the cosmos they control in the process of weaving his narrative. The three passages I examine all focus on this cosmic system, as the cosmic backdrop evolves and changes alongside the narrative itself. The cosmic analogy, therefore, is not static but changes in line with the narrative. This study will form the only extended analysis of cosmology in the Argonautica. The influence of cosmological material on the text (within the wider issue of philosophical influence) has attracted marginal attention, scholars often noting some of the more overt connections without a great deal of analysis. Works that acknowledge the presence of cosmological material at sporadic points include: Fränkel (1968); Hunter (1989 and 1993), Clauss (1993 and 2000); Levin (1970 and 1971). More detailed studies of aspects of cosmological material in the Argonautica include: Bogue (1979); Nelis (1992); Kyriakou (1994); Pendergraft (1995); Murray (2014); Santamaría Álvarez (2014). These studies all confirm the importance of cosmological ideas on the text, but focus on a particular manifestation of these ideas. This thesis will build on these ideas in an attempt to create a cohesive study of cosmology throughout the narrative and consider how this material affects our reading of the narrative itself and its poetic agenda, along with how this use feeds into Apollonius’ poetic values and contemporary poetic trends in general. The thesis is divided into three main chapters, in which I examine three key passages of the Argonautica to make my argument. In Chapter One I examine Orpheus’ song (1.496-511), in which the cultic bard Orpheus calms a fight between two Argonauts by singing a cosmogony. The song establishes cosmic forces that run analogous to the forces at work in the narrative and demonstrates how the growing influence of love in the cosmos parallels the increased reliance on love for the success of the Argonauts’ mission. In Chapter Two I examine Jason’s cloak (1.721-767), a passage that comprises the only extended ecphrasis in the Argonautica. The images woven into his cloak continue the cosmic theme begun in the song of Orpheus, since they demonstrate the world in a later stage of development, as human and divine events unfold and time progresses towards the Argonauts’ contemporary world. In Chapter Three I examine Eros’ sphere (3.129-141), an intricate toy offered to him by Aphrodite in exchange for his shooting Medea with an arrow to make her fall in love with Jason. The ball’s shape and its details both suggest that what Eros holds in his hand is some sort of divine three-dimensional model of the universe. I have chosen these three passages because a cosmological mode of reading is particularly strong in them; they bring to the forefront the cosmological undertone which underlies the wider narrative. My conclusion is that the three passages are all connected throughout the narrative by their cosmic material, material which underscores the Argonauts’ narrative and facilitates them anchoring their time to the grand timeframe of the cosmos. Both cosmic and narrative events run concurrently, as the evolution of the cosmos from its origins to the Argonauts’ present day runs alongside the evolution of the narrative. This duality shows how the Argonautic poet employs cosmology and in doing so creates a continuous parallel narrative that runs throughout the text. Since he uses three connected parallel narratives (song, garment, and toy), the reflective capacity of the passages is not merely a one-off, but consecutive, as all three comprise different moments in the same cosmic scheme. The boundaries between parallel narrative and main narrative are thus broken down in the passages as the narrator establishes the idea that cosmology does not only run parallel to the events of the narrative, but prefigures them and enriches the reader’s understanding of the narrative world. In sum, the cosmic readings of the passages demonstrate that what the narrator is drawing the reader towards is a cosmic subtext that is unfixed and undergoes change.

This thesis adopts a cognitive-phenomenological approach to Apollonius’ presentation of psychological imagery, thus eschewing the cultural-determinist assumptions that have tended to dominate Classical scholarship. To achieve this, I analyse relevant theories and results from the cognitive sciences (Theory of Mind, agency, gesture, conceptual metaphor), as well as perceived socio-literary influences from the post-Homeric tradition and the various advances (for example, medical) from contemporary Alexandria. This interdisciplinary methodology is then applied to the Argonautica in three large case studies: Medea and the simile of the sunbeam (3.755-60), Heracles and the simile of the gadfly (1.1286-72), and, finally, the poem’s overall psychological portrayal of Jason. In so doing, I show that Apollonius conforms to cognitive universal patterns of psychological expression, while also deploying and deepening his specific culture’s poetic, folk, and scientific models.

Before the publication of Professor Richard Hunter’s Cambridge Classics edition in August 2015, the last large-scale commentary on Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica Book 4 was that of Enrico Livrea in Italian in 1973, though mention should be made of the Budé volumes edited by Vian (1974–81). During this period the literary study of the poem has undergone a virtual revolution. The present thesis is an attempt to update and advance the work of the poem’s previous editors. It is intended as a prolegomenon to a commentary on the whole Book. Apollonius’ epic is an outstanding example of Hellenistic poetic practice, embodying all of its allusive qualities. It draws on the entire tradition of previous Greek literature, while maintaining an innovative point-of-view. This commentary tries to elucidate Apollonius’ experiments with respect to all aspects of style and narration, viewing him both as an important literary critic, closely involved in maintaining the inheritance of Classical Greece, and as a creative artist intent on developing an individual voice. The section chosen for commentary exhibits many aspects of Apollonius’ artistry: passages of atmospheric description, action sequences which speed the narrative, speeches, in some of which irony predominates while in others rhetoric prevails, similes which often contain fine images and a macabre climax of chilling power which achieves its effects through a number of striking and original details. There are, therefore, many reasons why the poem as a whole was enormously influential on Latin epic, especially on Virgil’s Aeneid, and why the story and Apollonius’ methods of retelling it enjoyed such an important reception in the European tradition.

Cette étude s'intéresse à l'autorité acquise par Euripide sur les auteurs grecs - poètes et prosateurs - de l'époque hellénistique et du Haut Empire. Dans la première partie, on examine les emprunts de motifs (expressifs et thématiques) littéraires à Euripide chez trois poètes, Sôsithéos, Théocrite et Apollonios de Rhodes, représentants de trois genres bien distincts : le drame, l'idylle et l'épopée. Dans la deuxième partie, on analyse d'une part le jugement porté sur l'oeuvre d'Euripide par Longin, Dion Chrysostome, Plutarque de Chéronée et Lucien de Samosate ; on traite d'autre part la distribution et la manipulation des références au poète chez les mêmes prosateurs : en projetant certaines réflexions du théâtre d'Euripide sur divers domaines de la vie humaine, ils mettent en lumière et étayent des valeurs morales et politiques. Pourtant, Plutarque ne nie pas les qualités de la création artistique du dramaturge, comme la puissance des images tragiques. Lucien se distingue des autres par le choix d'exploiter les citations euripidiennes dans un contexte comique à visée parodique
This work deals with the influence of Euripides over the greek authors - poets and writers - of the Hellenistic era and the High Empire. In the first section, we examine the literary motives (expressive and thematic) borrowed from Euripides by three poets, Sositheus, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes, representing very clearly three kinds of literature : the drama, the epic poetry and the idyll. In the second section, we analyse on the one hand the judgement throughout the whole literary work of Euripides by Longinus, Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch of Chaironeia and Lucian of Samosata ; on the other hand we deal with the distribution and the manipulation of references to the poet into the same writers : by projecting certain reflections of Euripides' theatre over different aspects of human life, they enlighten moral and political values. However, Plutarch does not deny the qualities of artistic creation of dramatizing, as the power of the tragic images. Lucian is distinguished by his choice to exploit the Euripides' references in a comic text of a parodic aim

A syntagmatic analysis of the Argonauts’ encounters with the Lemnian women and the Doliones in Apollonius of Rhodius’ Argonautica Book 1. Combining intertextuality with cognitive narratology, I approach the text from the perspective of the reader. Beginning with a study of the poem’s programmatic proem before moving to a study of the Argonauts’ first encounters on their outward journey, I map the reader’s experience on their own voyage through a difficult and elliptical narrative. To tackle the demands of a densely allusive text and the manipulations of a subjective narrator, I employ a plurality of readers: the general reader is accompanied on this exploration by two fictional readers. Charting the varying interpretations of the attentive reader and the experienced reader (Homeric auditor and Homeric scholar respectively) enables me to combine investigation of text and intertexts as moderated by the narrator with analysis of the ways they modify the expectations of the reader as they progress in a linear fashion from episode to episode. By consideration of where interpretations overlap and where they differ according to what the reader brings to the text and of how the narrative conditions its readers on the journey, I demonstrate the value of the reader-orientated approach to tackling the complexities of the narrative and the demands it places on all its readers.

In the first chapter of this thesis, starting from modern scholarship on melancholy, I attempt to combat the widely-held belief that this disease is identified exclusively with madness in antiquity. In order to do this, I locate the origins of this misreading in Cicero and attempt to restore the more inclusive attitude towards melancholy manifested in ps-Aristotle's treatise on melancholic genius, given that this text defines melancholy as consisting in both madness and depression. Chapter 11 argues that Menander is the first poet who shares this double understanding of melancholy; unlike Aristophanes who conceives of melancholy exclusively as a manic condition, the New Comedian describes it also as a depressive one. I therefore analyse the ways in which the word and the notion of melancholic depression are used in his comedies, according to the ps.-Aristotelian paradigm. In Chapter Ill, I suggest thatJason in Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica is a character that exhibits all the textbook symptoms of melancholic depression and that Apollonius describes him as such through an intertextual play with ps-Aristotle's reading of the Homeric Bellerophon as a depressive melancholic. Moving to Latin poetry, Chapter IV examines the end of De Rerum Natura III and argues that Lucretius' description of restlessness and discontent with life becomes a key-passage which later Latin writers (Horace, Persius and Seneca) identify through their medical readings as a description of melancholic depression. The thesis concludes with a chapter on the second book of Horacc's Epistles in which I argue that Horace engages with the tradition of the melancholic genius by creating an authorial persona who grounds his claims to genius on his alleged suffering from both melancholic madness and depression.

The abandonment of Heracles at the end of Book 1 in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica marks a turning point for Jason and the rest of the Argonauts. The aid of their mightiest hero, upon whose strength they had relied, is lost to them and they must find a means of accomplishing their nearly impossible mission without him. Allusions to Heracles occur throughout Book 2, in all nine units of action, drawing the reader’s attention to Argonauts’ efforts to carry on in the face of their loss. These allusions can be grouped into four categories: explicit mention, verbal echo, extrapolative allusion, and geographic reference. The poet’s deliberate deployment of these allusions highlights the extent to which Heracles’ strength-based approach to problem solving still influences the Argonauts’ actions in Book 2. This approach contrasts with the role played by divine agents, which increases markedly in the poem’s second half, beginning with Book 3.

This thesis adopts a mixed-method approach of quantitative and qualitative analysis to discuss the role of women, especially female speakers and addressees, in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica. In addition to the traditional individual mortal and divine speech roles, discourse categories such as the influence of the Muses, the presentation of female personifications, female collectives, frame and inserted speakers, and goddesses in disguise are also taken into consideration. The study shows that, despite the shared subject matter and greatly overlapping ensemble of speakers, Valerius makes significant changes in nearly all categories of female speech representation. Valerius entirely omits some of Apollonius’ female speech acts, reduces speeches from oratio recta to mere speech summaries, replaces Greek goddesses with similar, but not equivalent Roman speakers, assigns new speech roles to previously silent female characters, adds important new episodes with female speakers that do not occur in Apollonius’ epic, changes the speech contexts, the conversational behaviour and the overall characterization of speakers – in isolated individual instances as well as in more complex character portrayals. Valerius even modifies or transfers entire discourse patterns such as conversational deceit in speech and silence, or divine disguise, from one speaker group to another, usually of the opposite sex. Valerius transforms the Apollonian arrangement of a male-dominated, 'epic' first half following the invocation of Apollo and a second female, 'elegiac' half with many female speech acts and epiphanies, after a revision of the narrator’s relationship with the Muses, into a more traditional portrayal of the Muses and a much more balanced occurrence and continued influence of female speakers. The different female voices of the Argonautica, especially Juno, can continuously be heard in the Flavian epic and provide the reader with an alternative perspective on the events. Even the less prominent female speakers are part of a well-balanced and refined structural arrangement and show influences of several pre-texts, which they sometimes self-consciously address and use to their advantage. There can be no doubt that, like Apollonius, Valerius does not merely use female speech acts to characterise the male protagonists, but follows a clear structuring principle. Whereas Apollonius in accordance with his revised invocation of the Muses concentrates the female speech acts in the second half of his epic, especially the final book, Valerius links episodes and individual characterizations through same-sex and opposite-sex speaker doublets and triplets that can be ascribed to and explained by Jupiter’s declaration of the Fata. From Juno’s unofficial opening monologue to Medea’s emotional closing argument, the female voice accompanies and guides the reader through the epic. The female perspective is not the dominant view, but rather one of many perspectives (divine, mortal, female, male, old, young, servant, ruler, et al.) that complement the primary viewpoint of the poet and the male, mortal protagonists and offer an alternative interpretation.

This thesis is a study of embedded song in ancient Greek narrative poetry. The introduction defines the terminology (embedded song is defined as the depiction of the performance of a poem within a larger poem, such as the songs of Demodocus in Homer’s Odyssey) and sets the study in the context of recent narratological work done by scholars of Classical literature. This section of the thesis also contains a brief discussion of embedded song in the Homeric epics, which will form the background of all later examples of the motif. Chapter 1 deals with embedded song in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod’s Theogony. It is argued that the occurrence of embedded song across these poems indicates that the motif is a traditional feature of early Greek hexameter poetry, while the possibility of “inter-textual” allusion between these poems is considered, but finally dismissed. Chapter 2 focuses on Pindar, Bacchylides and Corinna, and explores how lyric poets use this motif in the various sub-genres of Greek lyric. In epinician poetry, it is argued that embedded song is used as a strategy of praise and also to boost the authority of the poet-narrator by association with the embedded performers, who can be seen to have in each case a particular source of authority distinct from that of the poet narrator. Chapter 3 considers the Hellenistic poets Apollonius Rhodius and Theocritus, and how their interest in depicting oral poetry meshes with their identity as literate and literary poets. Appendix I gives a list of all the examples of embedded song I have found in Greek poetry. Appendix II gives an account of Pindar’s Hymn to Zeus, a highly fragmentary poem which almost certainly contained an embedded song, analysing this as an example of the difficulties thrown up by lyric fragments for a study of embedded narratives.

Este trabalho pretende discutir de que forma a noção de heroísmo foi abordada nas Argonáuticas de Apolônio de Rodes em oposição ao conceito de herói presente nos poemas homéricos. A análise se baseará na distinção entre as personagens Jasão e Héracles como exemplos de modos de atuação díspares e conflitantes no poema. A tradução dos livros I e n das Argonáuticas complementa o estudo.
This work intends to discuss the notion of heroism present in Apollonius Rhodius\' Argonautica in opposition to the concept of hero in Homeric poems. The analysis is based on the distinction between the characters Jason and Heracles as examples of different and conflicting ways of action. The translation of Argonautica books I and n complements the study.

This report examines heroism in Apollonius’ Argonautica and argues that a different heroic model predominates in each of the first three books. Unlike Homer’s epics where Achilles with his superhuman might and Odysseus with his unparalleled cunning serve as the unifying forces for their respective poems, there is no single guiding influence in the Argonautica. Rather, each book establishes its own heroic type, distinct from the others. In Book 1, Heracles is the central figure, demonstrating his heroic worth through feats of strength and martial excellence. In Book 2, Polydeuces, the helmsmen, and—what I have called—the “Odyssean” Heracles use their mētis to guide and safeguard the expedition. And in Book 3, Jason takes center stage, a human character with human limitations tasked with an epic, impossible mission. This movement from Book 1 (Heracles and biē) to Book 2 (Polydeuces/helmsmen and mētis) to Book 3 (Jason and human realism) reflects the epic tradition: the Iliad (Achilles and biē) to the Odyssey (Odysseus and mētis) to the Argonautica (Apollonius’ epic and the Hellenistic age). Thus, the Argonautica is an epic about epic and its evolving classification of what it entails to be a hero. The final stage in this grand metaphor comes in Book 3 which mirrors the literary environment in Apollonius’ own day and age, a time invested in realism where epic had been deemed obsolete. Jason, as the representative of that Hellenistic world, is unable to successively use Iliadic or Odyssean heroics because he is as human and ordinary as Apollonius’ audience. Jason, like his readers, cannot connect to the archaic past. Medea, however, changes this when she saves Jason’s life by effectively rewriting him to become a superhuman, epic hero. She is a metaphor for Apollonius himself, a poet who wrote an epic in an unepic world. The final message of Book 3, therefore, is an affirmation not of the death of epic but its survival in the Hellenistic age.
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This paper addresses intertextual similarities of ethnographical and geographical details in Xenophon’s Anabasis and Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica and argues that these intertextualities establish a narrative timeline of Greek civilization on the Black Sea littoral. In both these works, a band of Greek travellers proceeds along the southern coast of the Black Sea, but in different directions and at vastly different narrative times. I argue that Apollonius’ text, written later than Xenophon’s, takes full advantage of these intertextualities in such a way as to retroject evidence about the landscape of the Black Sea littoral. This geographical and ethnographical information prefigures the arrival of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand in the region. By manipulating the differences in narrative time and time of composition, Apollonius sets his Argonauts up as precursors to the Ten Thousand as travellers in the Black Sea and spreaders of Greek civilization there. In Xenophon’s text, the whole Black Sea littoral becomes a liminal space of transition between non-Greek and Greek. As the Ten Thousand travel westward and get closer and closer to home and Greek civilization, they encounter pockets of Greek culture throughout the Black Sea, nestled in between swaths of land inhabited by native tribes of varying and unpredictable levels of civilization. On the other hand, in the Argonautica, Apollonius sets the Argonautic voyage along the southern coast of the Black Sea coast as a direct, linear progression from Greek to non-Greek. As the Argonauts move eastward, the peoples and places they encounter become stranger and less recognizably civilized. This progression of strangeness and foreignness works to build suspense and anticipation of the Argonauts’ arrival at Aietes’ kingdom in Colchis. However, some places have already been visited before by another Greek traveller, Heracles, who appears in both the Argonautica and the Anabasis to mark the primordial progression of Greek civilization in the Black Sea region. The landscape and the peoples who inhabit it have changed in the intervening millennium of narrative time between first Heracles’, then the Argonauts’, and finally the Ten Thousand’s journey, and they show the impact of the visits of all three.
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This dissertation is about how dominant identity is constructed through the centering and incorporation of marginal and subaltern subjectivities in Ancient Greek thought, with some preliminary consideration of the Classical Age but chiefly devoted to a study of Hellenistic poetic aesthetics at Ptolemaic Alexandria. The thesis argues ultimately for a specifically Queer and Afrocentric reading of the ArgonautikaI use postcolonial methods, tactics, and strategies to theorize the genealogical intersection(s) of gender and race, and explore the ancient roots of racism. I am indebted in my work to Critical Race Theory, Gender and Queer Theory, Intersectionality Theory and Decolonial Studies. Guided by the millennial discourses of the Coloniality of power and the contributions of Aníbal Quijano and his intellectual heirs to critical thought and theory—positing the fundamental and central functions of epistemological thought, knowledge-production and the control and regulation of knowledge within oppressive social orders as specifically and particularly interrelated practices in the European colonialism of Modernity, and enabling us to deconstruct out of our contemporary knowledge and social practices the oppressive consequences in Modernity as a result of the aftermath of Old World regimes in the New World—the argument throughout this dissertation subjects monuments of Classical Greek literature to an analysis that traces loosely a genealogy of how ideology and identity were constructed and fabricated in imperial contexts in the aftermath of the Greco-Persian Wars, during which time Hellenic peoples were first exposed to Empire, and some great portions of the Greek-speaking world came under the dominion of the Achaemenid imperial regime. In a manner of speaking, this dissertation deconstructs the intersections of identity, including gender (and ethnicity) and “race”, at pivotal moments in the history of Greek Antiquity. Principal test-cases for this study analyze monumental texts produced in societies under the hegemony of “democratic” imperial authority at Athens in the 5th Century BCE and Ptolemaic Egypt in the 3rd Century, in the aftermath of Alexander’s conquests. This dissertation explores how the control and regulation of racialized and ethnic marginalities and subalternities is critical to civic and political structures in the Classical Age, as well as how the interrelated concept of the gendered other, in artistic expressions of knowledge and authority—high literary monuments—functioned critically to reify and justify imperial and colonial practices in the Ancient Greek World. Chapter 1 consists primarily of readings of the Wesir-Heru (“Osiris-Horus”) dynastic succession myth from Egypt in representations of kingship and dynastic succession particularly in Africa and African spaces in the texts of Pindar, Herodotos, and Aiskhylos, including an exploration of the what at the instigation of Jackie Murry I call the Imagistic Poetics of Pindar and Aiskhylos in comparative consideration of Egyptian symbolic literary culture, including even the mdw-ntjr (“hieroglyphs”), and an especially instructive close reading of the center of the Agamemnon. To support my readings of Aiskhylos’ interactions with Egypt and Egyptian thought, I also consider how Aiskhylos interacted with the legacy of the Danaid myth. Situated in their proper historical contexts these readings demonstrate that during the height of the Achaemenid Empire in the Mediterranean World, which coincides incidentally with what we call the Greek Classical Age, Hellenism and Africanism were not mutually exclusive. In fact, as we see early in Chapter 1 with Pindar, Africanism is coextensive with Panhellenism. Furthermore, and critically, as part of my readings of gender as racialized—i.e., constructed under the Ancient Greek linguistic paradigms that govern “racial” otherness (genos)—I show that Blackness, beyond representing masculinity and the male body in the Greek artistic and visual imagination, is separable notionally in the Ancient Greek imagination, and in critical contrast to the modern and contemporary situation, from Africanism. In order to perform this work, I call upon archaeology and material evidence to render a more coherent picture of the networks of culture accessible in the micro- and macro-regions of an interconnected and transnational Ancient Mediterranean. In Appendixes to Chapter 1, I also provide brief readings of intertextuality in the Hellenistic reception at Alexandria of Classical Greek interactions with Egypt, Libya, and the African cultural past and show the embeddedness of that interaction in literary encounters especially, a fact evident from the Classical Greek texts. Chapter 2 explores the Hellenistic origins of Afro-Greek subjectivity in the literary record with Theokritos at Alexandria. I explore “race” in the West and the formation of Greek ethnicity in the East as a “kairological” artistic and poetic projection that exposes of the roots of 3rd-century universalist and globalist Ptolemaic imperial ideology. I also explore Space and identity, the social imaginary, and consequent(ial)ly the gendering of space in the poetry of Poseidippos. In my readings, we see texts engaged intimately with discourses about Sovereignty, and implicitly with the history of Rome and Qrt-ḥdšt (“Carthage”). Chapters 3 and 4 function as a pair or couple. After a full historical and social contextualization of Ptolemaic Alexandria in the Hellenistic Age of the 3rd Century BCE, as well as an exploration of an inclusive range of Queer (including “LGBTQ+”) subjectivities in Alexandrian poetry in Chapter 3, in Chapter 4 I argue that in the Argonautika of Apollonios Rhodios Medeia represents a Queer woman who endures systematic heteronormative and patriarchal oppression, or heterosexism. This opens up Book 4 of the Argonautika for fertile close readings of the inclusive and all-encompassing aesthetics that constitute Hellenistic poetry, including authentically Kemetic (“Egyptian”) voices. The Epilogue provides a roadmap for applying these analytic tools to the Latin Literature of Rome.