Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature

Description

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. Preface Contents Introduction Part I: Literary Criticism ἵν’ ὁ θεατὴς προσδοκῶν καθῇτο: What Did Ancient Critics Know of ‘Suspense’? Part II: Archaic Poetry Homeric Suspense Suspense, Orality, and Hymnic Narrative: The Case of the Homeric Hymns Part III: Tragedy Waiting for Xerxes: Information Economics and the Composition of a Suspense Plot out of Familiar Events in Aeschylus’ Persae Narrative Suspense in Sophocles: The Moral Perplexity of Duelling Narratives in Philoctetes Affective Suspense in Euripides’ Ion Part IV: Comedy Staged Suspense: Scenic Spectacle, Anxious Expectation, and Dramatic Enthralment in Aristophanic Theatre Part V: Historiography Suspense in Herodotus’ Narrative of the Battle of Thermopylae The Thucydidean Question, Structuralism, and ‘Neo-Unitarianism’: Near Misses and Suspense in the History Suspense in Conspiracy Narratives: Polybius and Appian Part VI: Oratory Suspense in Lysias Narrative and Suspense in Public Forensic Orations Part VII: Novel Suspense in the Ancient Greek Novel Bibliography List of Contributors Index Νominum et Rerum Index Locorum