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Η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή κινήθηκε γύρω από έναν κεντρικό άξονα: την ιστορία και την κριτική της λογοτεχνίας στα δύο μεγάλα γένη της αρχαίας ελληνικής γραμματείας (επική και λυρική ποίηση). Στόχος της είναι η εξέταση της αρχαίας λογοτεχνικής κριτικής στο αριστοτελικό corpus με βάση το στερεότυπο κείμενο, προκειμένου να μελετηθούν αναλυτικά η λειτουργία, η σπουδαιότητα και τα όριά της. Μπορεί ο Αριστοτέλης να ασκεί αμιγώς λογοτεχνική κριτική στο Περὶ ποιητικῆς, στα κεφ. 1-12 του τρίτου βιβλίου του Περὶ ῥητορικῆς, στα βιβλία Α, α, Λ του Μετὰ τὰ Φυσικὰ και ενίοτε σε κάποια άλλα συγγράμματά του, αλλά η παρούσα εργασία στοχεύει στην περαιτέρω ανάλυση, στο μέτρο του δυνατού, όλων των αναφορών του σε κάποιον επικό ή λυρικό ποιητή και στην εξαγωγή χρήσιμων συμπερασμάτων. Η εργασία διαρθρώνεται σε επτά κεφάλαια, ακολουθούν τα συμπεράσματα (8ο κεφάλαιο), έπεται η βιβλιογραφία (πρωτογενής και δευτερογενής) και δύο ευρετήρια παραθεμάτων (αρχαίων και νεότερων κύριων ονομάτων) που βοηθούν στην ανάγνωσή της. / The present doctoral thesis was motivated by a central axis: the history and the criticism of literature in the two big genres of ancient Greek literature (epic and lyric poetry). The main objective of this dissertation is the examination of ancient literary criticism of the corpus of Aristotle which is based on the stereotyped text, so that the function, the importance and its limits are studied analytically. Aristotle exerts constructive literary criticism in the Poetics, in third book of Rhetoric (chapters 1-12), in the books A, a, L of Metaphysics and occasionally in some of his other works, however, the present approach aims at the further analysis, as much as possible, of all reports on an epic or lyric poet and the inference of useful conclusions. The research is divided into seven chapters, the conclusions (ch. 8), the bibliography (primary and secondary) and two indeces passages (ancient and new principal names) that help the interpretation.

This research project investigates the relationship between pain and the practices of explaining and narrating it to others. Current scholarship argues that the representation of suffering became, during the Imperial period, an increasingly effective and popular strategy for cultivating authority and that this explains the success of Christian culture’s representation of itself as a community of sufferers. One criticism of this approach is that the experience of pain has often been assumed, rather than analysed. Here, I investigate the nature of pain by attending to its intimate relationship with language; pain was connected to the strategies used to communicate that experience to others. I will show that writers throughout the Imperial period were concerned with questions about how to communicate pain and how that act of communication shaped, managed, and alleviated the experience. I investigate this culture along three axes. Part 1, ‘The Sublime Representation of Pain’, investigates the way different authors thought about the capacity of sublime language and rhetorical techniques such as enargeia to effectively communicate pain. I argue that for writers such as Longinus, the sublime offers an opportunity to replicate the traumatic experience of the pain sufferer in the audience or listener—pain is narrated to the audience through a traumatic communicative mode. Contrarily, I show how authors such as Plutarch and Galen were particularly concerned to desublimate the representation of pain, reducing the affective power of images of pain by promoting the audience’s conscious engagement with the text or representational medium. Part 2, ‘Medical Narratives’, examines a conflict between Galen and Aristides over the way language and narrative signified or referred to painful experiences. I show how both writers negotiate the way pain destroys and transcends ordered, structured, narrative by engaging in a process of narrative translation. I will illuminate the difference between scientific, diagnostic narratives which explain and rationalise pain experiences (in the case of Galen) and those which attempt to give witness to the nebulous, ineffable qualities of pain. In Part 3, ‘Narrating Cures’ I investigate ancient practices of psychotherapy. I show how various philosophical consolations were underpinned by an understanding of the power of pain to continually return and overwhelm the individual. I show further that the Greek romances engage in a type of talking cure: the novels use narration and story-telling to help assert the protagonists’ distance from their past traumatic experiences and, thus, allow the individual to overcome their painful past.