Nonnus' "Dionysiaca" and the Redefinition of Epic Poetry and the Heroic Code [electronic resource].

9781321938555

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This dissertation aims to explore how Nonnus' Dionysiaca engages with literary tradition and the concepts of traditionality and originality in composition and reading. Nonnus does this by attacking Homer and traditional epic's role in formulating the standard for epic composition and the criteria for assessing poetry and by simultaneously arguing in favor of his own conception of polygeneric poetics as a superior poetic enterprise. He accordingly takes a polemical tone against the primacy of Homer (symbolic of traditionality) as a model for poetics and against the reader who judges poetry with reference to canonical criteria. Nonnus articulates this polemic by constructing a web of metaphors that run throughout the poem and develop a metapoetic dialogue with the reader about his own poetics and their superiority to the tradition. The prime metaphor that Nonnus employs is that of the hero. Critiques of traditional heroes and heroic values symbolically represent Nonnus' critique of traditional poetics to the reader. Dionysus' own untraditional actions in heroic situations, his didactic mission, and his altruistic and original attitude to heroic activity represent Nonnus' own didactic, original, and untraditional poetics that aim to reinvent the world of literature and epic as a polygeneric environment that defies traditional schemes of classification. Simultaneously, Nonnus expands his readers' horizon of expectations and challenges them to embrace his novel poetics as a valid approach to epic. After exploring the intellectual background that informs the reading practices and canonicity against which Nonnus argues (Introduction), as well as the background of the Late Antique altruistic hero (Chapter 1), this study looks at a series of these metaphors, analyzing each type for imagery that engages with traditionality, reading practices, and heroic values. Some of these images deal directly with reading practices, such as the `ecphrastic narrator' that provides hypothetical readings and misreadings of the poem (Chapter 3) and the reading of universal texts (Chapter 2). Others discuss poetic composition and the dangers of traditional evaluations such as the usurpers who steal divine (and poetic) identities (Chapter 4). The discourse on heroic values and superiority finds its strongest expression in the characterization of the ancestors of Homeric heroes as exempla for their descendants (Chapter 2). Chapter 5, which looks at Book 25, unites all these images in an analysis of Nonnus' synkrisis between Dionysus and other heroes and his shield ecphrasis as an exemplification of the superiority of Dionysiac heroics over traditional ideas. Additionally, Book 25 engages directly with the spirit of Homer and depicts Nonnus resurrecting the poet and carrying his work to fulfillment within the Dionysiaca. In figuring the Dionysiaca as a polygeneric poem, Nonnus advocates for an approach to poetics that takes traditional genres and combines them into an encyclopedic whole that expresses all of ancient literature in one integrated and original poem. It is this syncretic and unifying approach that necessitates his discourse with the reader and tradition in order to justify his inclusion as a representative of the new poetics of Late Antiquity.

Books / Online / Dissertations & Theses

English

April 12, 2016

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2015.

Yale University.