Description
- Abstract:
- This dissertation reappraises the relationship between dithyramb and tragedy by examining the two Dionysiac choral performance-genres against the backdrop of Athens’ vibrant and rapidly growing theater culture in the fifth century BCE. My principal argument is that in that era the relative positions of tragedy and dithyramb in the hierarchy of Greek performance-genres had not yet concretized and therefore tragedy’s eventual position as the ‘top genre’ of ancient Greece was still far from assured, despite the easy impression, given later developments, that tragedy was always the superior genre to dithyramb. The dissertation consists of two halves of two chapters each. The first part approaches the relationship between dithyramb and tragedy from the perspective of performance. Whereas it has been common since at least the time of Plato to assert that tragedy was a mimetic genre, insofar as performers in tragedy impersonated fictional characters, and dithyramb was not mimetic, I argue that the genres should be united under the rubric of mimetic performance. In support of this claim, I examine fifth-century vase-paintings that depict tragic and dithyrambic performance as well as the surviving texts (or really scripts) of the two genres for evidence that both dithyramb and tragedy shared a mimetic mode of performance. The dissertation’s second half turns to the tradition of informal commentary on the two genres as found in sources from the last third of the fifth century BCE. By examining the historical writings of Herodotus and the comedies of Aristophanes, I demonstrate that in the late fifth century there was an ongoing debate about the nature of tragedy and dithyramb, both individually and in relation to each other, and I argue that at that time the two genres were conceived of in largely similar terms, making them equal members of the same culture of poetry and performance. Over the course of its two halves, this dissertation reassesses the question of what sets tragedy apart as a genre from its rivals; it also sets out to overturn teleological accounts of the history of dramatic and theatrical performance in ancient Greece.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2015)
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Citation
Wellenbach, Matthew C.,
"Choruses for Dionysus: Studies in the History of Dithyramb and Tragedy"
(2015).
Classics Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z08W3BQ6
