Time is assigned a central place in Pindar's 'Epinicians'. The overriding concern of encomiastic poetry is to confer immortality on the victor's name, his family and city, and Pindar constantly emphasizes the need to transcend the fragmented and transient human chronos and inscribe the athletic victory on the complete and eternal chronos of the gods. In addition to this, however, Pindar also seeks to transform the performance per se into a unique experience for his audience; on the one hand, his song unveils and manifests the divine plan that lies behind the phenomenological contingency of human temporality, on the other, it serves to collapse past, present, and future thus transforming the performative 'here and now' into an 'eternal present'. The thesis examines the means by which both the metaphorical 'immortalization' of the laudandus and the collapse of the three temporal dimensions are achieved, taking a close look at the various 'times' we come across in Pindar's poetic oeuvre: cosmic, human, historical, narrative, generic, prophetic and performance time. How does Pindar represent chronos? What is the place of 'human temporality' in relation to 'superior' modes of existence? What is Pindar's vision of history? How does he reconstruct the past and why? What temporality does his narrative serve to set up and how does this relate to his view of time and the temporality of the lyric genre? How do prophecies work in the Epinicians? How does the performance affect the audience's experience of time? These are some of the questions that this thesis will attempt to explore and discuss. As will become clear, throughout his poetry Pindar is concerned not only to underline his poetry's role in the preservation and dissemination of a victor's kleos but also to present himself as a maître du temps.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:442191 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Pavlou, Maria |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1983/948a972c-aaa6-470b-b105-2748ab0608fc |
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