Callimachus' hymns

Blurb:
Ancient Greek hymns traditionally include a narrative section describing episodes from the hymned deity’s life. These narratives developed in parallel with epic and other narrative genres, and their study provides a different perspective on ancient Greek narrative. Within the hymn genre, the place and function of the narrative section changed over time and with different kinds
of hymn (literary or cultic; religious, philosophical or magical). Hymnic Narrative and the Narratology of Greek Hymns traces developments in narrative in the hymn genre from the Homeric Hymns via Hellenistic and Imperial hymns to those in the Orphic tradition and in magical papyri, analysing them in narratological terms in order to place them in the wider context of ancient Greek narrative literature.

Contributors are: Ewen Bowie, Michael Brumbaugh, Nicola Devlin, William D. Furley, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregi, Anne-France Morand, Ivana Petrovic, Nicholas Richardson, Susan A. Stephens, and Athanassios Vergados.

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"Extract from the book proposal:

The basic premise for this volume is a simple one: the editors and contributors feel that a collective and comparative focus on the narrative techniques and on the narrative sections of ancient Greek hymns (across the centuries and of various kinds) can yield extremely fruitful results, both for the reading of individual texts and authors and for the study of the hymnic genre as a whole; and that there is a marked gap in scholarship in this regard, in comparison with the study of other ancient Greek genres containing narrative.  We recognise, of course, that discussions of the narrative aspects of hymns have not been absent from scholarly readings, especially of the major ‘literary’ hymns; but it is also the case that the analysis of narrative within classics has become far more sophisticated (especially in the last two decades), so that far more can now usefully be said than, e.g., categorising hymns as Du- or Er-Stil. Studies of the hymn genre have lagged behind those of some other major genres, on the whole, in exploiting the full potential of recent studies of narrative. Among the approaches employed by the volume’s contributors are, naturally, the kinds of narratological analysis first popularised within classics by Irene de Jong,  but also other kinds of analysis of narrative literature and of narrative techniques, including more traditional approaches—especially in the case of the less studied texts featured in the volume, which unlike Callimachus’ or the Homeric Hymns have not already had the benefit of countless scholarly ‘readings’ and interpretations. That is to say, the volume is not intended to be a theory-heavy contribution to narratological scholarship within classics (nor to prescribe a particular narratological orthodoxy to its contributors); rather, it aims to be an accessible introduction to some of the possibilities raised by narrative- and narratology-focused approaches to the hymnic genre, and as such a valuable contribution to both the fields of ancient Greek hymn scholarship and of narratology within classics. The individual contributions often focus on examples and case studies, unlike the chapters on hymns in narratology collections as, for example, the ones edited by de Jong et al.,  which, by the nature of those volumes, aim to survey their respective corpora of hymns more evenly.

Since the focus of the volume is one particular aspect of hymnic texts and their interpretation, the editors have assembled contributions on a large variety of texts of that genre—wide-ranging in several ways: in terms of chronology; of means of transmission (from the very well-known corpora transmitted in literary MSS, to those preserved epigraphically or on papyrus); of the identity of the hymned gods and other entities; of formal features (e.g. different metres and prose); and including both ‘literary’ and ‘cult’ hymns.  Because of the sufficiently narrow focus of the volume, we believe that this wider casting of the net is not out of place, but is rather very revealing, in that it shows the diversity and the development of narrative techniques in Greek hymns over a great many texts, authors, and traditions (including less clearly ‘literary’ hymns), and enables the contributors to demonstrate precisely what is unique, and what more conventional, in their chosen texts. "

À partir d’un corpus de poèmes et d’images mythologiques, cet ouvrage explore les liens qui unissent l’invention littéraire et les arts visuels à une époque de foisonnement et de renouvellement des formes dans les deux domaines. La démarche choisie prend appui sur un ensemble de textes de l’époque hellénistique et de l’époque augustéenne : le recueil d’épigrammes de Posidippe de Pella, l’Élégie du tatouage, l’Hymne pour le bain de Pallas et l’Hécalè de Callimaque, l’Alexandra de Lycophron, l’Idylle 24 de Théocrite, ainsi que des épigrammes grecques de la Couronne de Philippe et différents passages des chants II à IV des Métamorphoses d’Ovide. À la lumière du commentaire de ces œuvres poétiques sont explorées différentes modalités du rapport entre textes et images sur toutes sortes de supports (sculpture, peinture, mosaïque, arts précieux).
Les auteurs envisagent notamment la manière dont les poètes anciens sollicitaient la culture iconographique de leurs lecteurs pour leur permettre de visualiser les mythes qu’ils décrivaient, ou, au contraire, pour les inciter à se figurer des scènes impossibles ou aberrantes, en rupture avec le répertoire diffusé par les arts visuels. Dans d’autres cas, la confrontation entre poésie et documentation iconographique permet de reconstituer le contexte de création d’une œuvre ou d’identifier des scènes conçues comme l’illustration d’un texte poétique précis. Telles sont les pistes de réflexion ouvertes dans cet ouvrage qui propose une véritable plongée dans la fabrique des images à l’époque hellénistique.