Is Korybantic Performance a (Lyric) Genre

Bibliographic Data

ID20078890
AuthorsMark Griffith (corresponding author)
Year2019
Pages231-270
Publication date2019-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueGenre in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry : Theories and Models (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/9789004412590_010
OpenAlexW3137625590
ISBN9789004412590
LanguageEN
Citations received2

Korybantic rites and other musical performances of similar type involving strong emotional affect were widely practiced throughout the ancient Greek world, but they are not normally discussed as examples of “Greek lyric.” The relative unimportance of the verbal component, together with elite biases, ancient and modern, about the nature, purpose, and participants in such rituals, seem to have unduly marginalized lyric performances of this kind. With the help particularly of Aristotle’s comments on different kinds of musical affect in Politics Book 8, this chapter explores not just the reasons for this omission but also some key characteristics of Korybantic rituals and other related performance types of an exciting and mood-altering kind, which together clearly constituted a significant segment of Greek “song culture” even though they do not survive as written texts. My discussion contributes another relevant dimension to this volume’s range of approaches to the question of what constitutes a “lyric genre,” and what poetic, social, and performative criteria should be invoked in answering such a question

Aesthetics · Art · Elite · Linguistics · Literature · Mood · Musical · Performative utterance · Poetry · Politics · Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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Open DOILibgenOpen Access