Metapoetry

Pindar is perhaps the most metapoetic of the early Greek poets: his songs constantly refer self-referentially back to their own circumstances, poetics, and the social relationships that they dramatize and exemplify. This chapter examines some typical tropes used by Pindar and (to a lesser extent) other Greek choral poets to reflect on what they as poets and their poems as songs are doing. More broadly, it looks at the metapoetics and implied poetics of early Greek choral song as reflected and systematized in Pindar’s victory odes. The nature of song; the internal form of the poem; the poetics of genre; and the social relationships between poet, audience, and patron that underlie praise poetry are all given brief consideration.

Choir · Poetics · Poetry · Praise · Victory · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Classical Studies and Philology