First-Person Fictions

Pindar’s Poetic ‘I’

Bibliographic Data

ID9288709
AuthorsMary R Lefkowitz (corresponding author)
Year1991
Pages226
Publication date1991-08-15
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueFirst-person fictions (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198146865.001.0001
OpenAlexW4388370589
Open LibraryOL1533913M
ISBN9780198146865
LanguageEN
Citations received16

This collection of essays, written over a period of almost thirty years, deals with one problem: who is the `I' in the odes of the most celebrated ancient Greek poet, Pindar? Since antiquity, the complex and allusive language of the first-person statements has provoked many different answers. Professor Lefkowitz describes the function and nature of Pindar's `I'-statements and proposes a controversial solution that would cause some histories of Greek literature to be rewritten. Rather than accept the view that the identity of the speaker could be subject to instant and unannounced change, she proposes that the voice of the victory odes is the poet himself, in his most professional persona. Professor Lefkowitz also refutes the traditional belief that the odes were sung by a chorus. She shows that in most, if not all cases, they were sung as solos and that Pindar was continuing the tradition established by the Homeric bards

Aesthetics · Ancient Greek · Art · Chorus · Humanities · Identity (music · Literature · Ode · Period (music · Persona · Poetry · Politics · Reflexive pronoun · Subject (documents · Victory · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Computer Science · Law · Philosophy · Ancient Rhetoric · Athletics in literature · First person narrative · Games in literature · Greece · Greek · Greek Laudatory poetry · History and criticism · in literature · Laudatory poetry · Pindar · Rhetoric, Ancient · Self in literature · Technique