Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature by Ioannis Konstantakos, ISBN-13: 978-3110715392

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Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature by Ioannis Konstantakos, ISBN-13: 978-3110715392

[PDF eBook eTextbook]

• Publisher: ‎ Walter de Gruyter (February 22, 2021)
• Language: ‎ English
• ‎430 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 3110715392
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-3110715392

The use of suspense in ancient literature attracts increasing attention in modern scholarship, but hitherto there has been no comprehensive work analysing the techniques of suspense through the various genres of the Classical literary canon. This volume aspires to fill such a gap, exploring the phenomenon of suspense in the earliest narrative writings of the western world, the literature of the ancient Greeks. The individual chapters focus on a wide range of poetic and prose genres (epic, drama, historiography, oratory, novel, and works of literary criticism) and examine the means by which ancient authors elicited emotions of tense expectation and fearful anticipation for the outcome of the story, the development of the plot, or the characters’ fate. A variety of theoretical tools, from narratology and performance studies to psychological and cognitive approaches, are exploited to study the operation of suspense in the works under discussion. Suspenseful effects are analysed in a double perspective, both in terms of the artifices employed by authors and with regard to the responses and experiences of the audience. The volume will be useful to classical scholars, narratologists, and literary historians and theorists.

Table of Contents:

Preface

Vasileios Liotsakis Introduction

1 The narrative perspective: Structuring suspenseful discourse

2 The sociological perspective: Narratees, character portraiture, and suspense

3 Violating the ancient narratees’ foreknowledge: ‘Suspense of distraction’

4 Suspense theories and controversial issues of Classical Philology

5 Outline of the present volume

Part I: Literary Criticism

Anna A. Novokhatko ἵν’ ὁ θεατὴς προσδοκῶν καθῇτο: What Did Ancient Critics Know of ‘Suspense’?

Part II: Archaic Poetry

Ruth Scodel Homeric Suspense

1 Homer and the paradox of suspense

2 The suspenseful episode

3 Prior knowledge and uncertainty

4 Retardation

5 Low uncertainty, emotional intensity

Polyxeni Strolonga Suspense, Orality, and Hymnic Narrative: The Case of the Homeric Hymns

1 The Homeric Hymn to Demeter

2 The Homeric Hymn to Apollo

3 The Homeric Hymn to Hermes

4 The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite

5 Conclusions

Part III: Tragedy

Nikos Manousakis Waiting for Xerxes: Information Economics and the Composition of a Suspense Plot out of Familiar Events in Aeschylus’ Persae

1 Introduction: Qualities of suspense

2 Aeschylus’ Persae: A suspenseful plot

3 Conclusions

Andreas Markantonatos Narrative Suspense in Sophocles: The Moral Perplexity of Duelling Narratives in Philoctetes

1 Introduction

2 Disinterring the buried past: Moral suspense in Sophocles’ Philoctetes

3 Closing remarks

Francis Dunn Affective Suspense in Euripides’ Ion

Part IV: Comedy

Ioannis M. Konstantakos Staged Suspense: Scenic Spectacle, Anxious Expectation, and Dramatic Enthralment in Aristophanic Theatre

1 Introduction: Hitchcock, the Greeks, and visual suspense

2 Morphology of Aristophanic suspense

3 Suspense visualized: The scenic imagery of anxiety in the Acharnians and the Thesmophoriazusae

Part V: Historiography

Vasiliki Zali Suspense in Herodotus’ Narrative of the Battle of Thermopylae

Vasileios Liotsakis The Thucydidean Question, Structuralism, and ‘Neo-Unitarianism’: Near Misses and Suspense in the History

1 The Thucydidean Question

2 The categories of near miss narratives in the History

3 The evolution of near miss narratives: From local suspense to global suspense

4 The Thucydidean Question revisited: Structural studies and Neo-Unitarianism

Nikos Miltsios Suspense in Conspiracy Narratives: Polybius and Appian

1 The assassination of Julius Caesar (App. BC 2.111–117)

2 The Apelles conspiracy (Plb. 4.76–5.28)

3 The Sosibius and Hermeias conspiracies (Plb. 5.34–56)

4 Conclusions

Part VI: Oratory

Michael J. Edwards Suspense in Lysias

Christos Kremmydas Narrative and Suspense in Public Forensic Orations

1 Demosthenes’ oratorical performance in Athens (D. 19.17–23)

2 Demosthenes’ performance in Pella according to Aeschines (Aeschin. 2.21–43)

3 The Athenian dēmos on tenterhooks after the fall of Elateia in 339/338 (D. 18.169–179)

4 Uncertainty and apprehension in Athens after the defeat at Chaeroneia (Lycurg. 1.39–42)

5 The siege and capture of Plataea in 429–427 (Apollodorus, Against Neaira [D.] 59.98–103)

6 Conclusion

Part VII: Novel

Silvia Montiglio Suspense in the Ancient Greek Novel

1 Introduction

2 Callirhoe

3 An Ephesian Tale

4 Leucippe and Clitophon

5 Daphnis and Chloe

6 The Aethiopica

7 Conclusions

Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index Νominum et Rerum

Index Locorum

I. M. Konstantakos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Vasileios Liotsakis, University of the Peloponnese, Kalamata, Greece.

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