<p><p>This dissertation investigates the prominent role of the Mouseion-Library of Alexandria in the construction of a new community of archivist-poets during the third century BCE in the wake of Alexander the Great's conquests. I contend that the Mouseion was a new kind of institution--an imperial archive--that facilitated a kind of political domination that worked through the production, perpetuation, and control of particular knowledges about the world rather than through fear and brute force.</p></p><p><p>Specifically, I argue that those working in the Mouseion, or Library, were shaping a new vision of the past through their meticulous editorial and compilatory work on the diverse remnants of the pre-conquest Greeks. Mastery of this tradition, in turn, came to form the backbone of what it meant to be educated (<i>pepaideumenoi</i>), yet even more importantly what it meant to be a Greek in this new political landscape. In contrast to many studies of politics and culture in the Hellenistic period which focus on the exercise of power from the top down, I explore how seemingly harmless or even esoteric actions, actions that seem far distant from the political realm, such as the writing of poetry and editing of texts, came to be essential in maintaining the political authority and structures of the Hellenistic monarchs.</p></p><p><p>In developing this vision of the cultural politics of the Hellenistic Age, my first chapter examines the central role of the Mouseion of Alexandria in making erudition one of the key sources of socio-cultural capital in this ethnically diverse and regionally dispersed polity. Through the work of its scholars, the Mouseion and its archive of the Greek past became the center around which a broader panhellenic community and identity coalesced. In chapter two, I explore the implications of this new institution and social type through a close reading of Lykophron's enigmatic work, the <i>Alexandra</i>, presenting it as a poetic archive that used philological practices to make the past relevant to a new group of elite consumers scattered throughout the Hellenistic world by re-imagining the conflict between Europe and Asia. In the final chapter, I argue that this new institution gave rise to a new type of man, the archivist-poet. I examine how this new figure of subjectivity became one of the primary means of participating in Hellenistic empires of knowledge through the genre of literary epigram.</p></p> / Dissertation

A l’heure où l’ « archéologie du livre » est une thématique prisée par les historiens et philologues médiévistes, ce travail de doctorat en archéologie grecque entend proposer une étude du livre antique à travers l’exemple de l’Iliade. Pour cela, il commence par interroger les différents regards successivement portés sur le livre en tant qu’objet de recherche, d’abord comme simple support, dont la matérialité est largement ignorée par les philologues au profit du seul message qu’il transmet, puis comme objet historique dont la matérialité est progressivement prise en compte par les collectionneurs, bibliophiles et enfin archéologues. Cette première partie, historiographique et épistémologique débouche sur une étude historique et sociale des conditions de la transmission et de la réception de l’Iliade dans le monde antique, qui permet de mettre en évidence la spécificité du manuscrit homérique dans la civilisation gréco-romaine et l’apport des sources testimoniales sur ce point. À la lumière de ces deux temps de réflexion complémentaires, l’analyse technique du livre antique, enfin, propose un bilan critique des connaissances actuelles sur la fabrication, l’utilisation et le rangement du livre de papyrus dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine. / At a time where the “archaeology of the book” is a highly-valued theme among historians and medieval philologists, this PhD in Greek Archaeology intends to offer a study of the antique book through the example of the Iliad. To this end, we will start by interrogating the various perspectives successively used to consider the book as a research object, first as a simple medium, whose materiality is largely ignored by philologists in favour of the sole message it delivers, then as an object of history, whose materiality is gradually taken into account by collectors, bibliophiles and archaeologists. This first part, historiographic and epistemological, ends with a historic and social study of the conditions of the transmission and reception of the Iliad in the antique world, which helps us bring to light the specificity of the Homeric manuscript in the Graeco-Roman civilisation and the input of testimonial sources on that subject. In the light of these two complementary reflection points / times, the technical analysis of the antique book, lastly, offers a critical assessment of the current knowledge on fabrication, use and stocking of the papyrus book in the Graeco-Roman Antiquity.

Texte remanié de: Th.--University of Liverpool, 1979. / Bibliogr. p. 336-339. Chronologie.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Liverpool, 1979. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 367-415).

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Liverpool, 1979. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 367-415).