Poetry in archaic and classical Greece was a practical art that arose
from specific social or political circumstances. The interpretation of a
poem or dramatic work must therefore be viewed in the context of its
performance. In Poetry, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece,
Lowell Edmunds and Robert W. Wallace bring together a distinguished
group of contributors to reconstruct the performance context of a wide
array of works, including epic, tragedy, lyric, elegy, and proverb.
Analyzing the passage in the Odyssey in which a collective delirium
comes over the suitors, Giulio Guidorizzi reveals how the poet describes
a scene that lies outside the narrative themes and diction of epic.
Antonio Aloni offers a reading of Simonides' elegy for the Greeks who
fell at Plataea. Lowell Edmunds interprets the so-called seal of
Theognis as lying on a borderline between the performed and the textual.
Taking up proverbs, maxims, and apothegms, Joseph Russo examines "the
performance of wisdom." Charles Segal focuses on the unusual role played
by the chorus in Euripides' Bacchae. Reading the plot of Euripides'
Ion, Thomas Cole concludes that the task of constructing the meaning
of the play is to some extent delegated to the public. Robert Wallace
describes the "performance" of the Athenian audience and provides a
catalog of good and bad behavior: whistling, shouting, and throwing
objects of every kind. Finally, Maria Grazia Bonanno stresses the
importance of performance in lyric poetry.
