Talk:Greek lyric/Archive 1

Archive 1

Iambus and elegy

It looks as though Miller's anthology includes iambus and elegy, but I wonder if we should maintain the distinction that the scholarship holds between these genres and lyric composed in the Aeolic and Dorian traditions.  ^davidiad_.:τ 20:15, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I think we should acknowledge the distinction between "Greek lyric" as generally distinguished from verse drama and epic, and "lyric" in the sense of choral odes and monody (in turn more carefully distinguished from elegy and iambus). Most general anthologies of "Greek lyric poets" (like Lattimore's) include iambus and elegy. I'm wary of the tendency on WP to make hyper-scholarly distinctions as a matter of exclusion instead of providing an general overview that's likely to encompass broadly what may've brought the reader to the article, and then explaining more technical senses. The attempt to choose the most narrowly accurate definition of something underlies a lot of stultifying pedantic debate on these pages, and it's contrary to the principle of no original research: editors wield all sorts of other rules to try to say "no, this is what this really is," when that isn't what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to help readers understand what they're looking up, within the widest likely frame of reference—which will include students in survey courses that use anthologies treating lyric as relatively short poems in a wide range of meters, that is, not-epic and not-dramatic verse. Now, I've done a slapdash job, nor have I chosen the best source (just a convenient source that summarizes well). But I do think the "three branches" organization is common in general literary histories, and that there's a positive reason to explain inclusively for the benefit of the kind of readers who are likely to use a Wikipedia article why these anthologies include elegy and iambus (which have their own articles). As someone with a background in English lit, I would also say that the 'voice' of elegy and iambus are often treated in the history of poetry under the catchall "lyric", and that the formation of voice, image, and genre are as cogent as metrical distinctions. Also, elegy and iambus were part of the sympotic scene and "song culture" in general, so to divorce them from monody would seem culturally abstract, to me at least: if we understand Archaic Greece as a "song culture," as having a sort of poetry scene that encouraged artistic expression in short verse forms, then elegy and iambus were part of that, vividly in the symposium. I've often bewailed the fact that we lack an article on choral lyric, however. Cynwolfe (talk) 21:16, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Good points, though I don't think that the distinction approaches "hyper-scholarly". I know I've seen a decent formulation of this distinction somewhere and I'll try to find it. While I certainly think that elegy and iambus should be discussed in the article, I also believe that we should prepare the reader for educated conversation, which wouldn't include calling Tyrtaeus and Semonides "lyric poets," (still even worse, "melic poets") despite their inclusion in anthologies like Campbell's Greek Lyric Poetry, which carries the subtitle A selection of Early Greek Lyric, Elegiac and Iambic poetry reflecting the "three branches" approach under a big tent that you mention. Once the article is fleshed out, though, we can ditch the list at the end which, as lists cannot help but do, bowlderizes handsome and necessary distinctions. We might also make sure that we anchor links for elegiac poets until we have Greek elegy; there is already Iambus (genre). To forestall the fun OR warring you anticipate, I argue against myself by quoting the OCD and New Pauly entries on lyric:

Though the term was extended to poetry sung to other stringed instruments or to the flute, it is always used of sung poetry as distinct from stichic, distichic (elegy included), or epodic poems which were recited or spoken. (OCD)

This also includes elegiac distichs, which were usually or even without exception accompanied by an aulós, epinician poetry, accompanied by a lýra or an aulós (e.g. Pind. Ol. 3,8; Ol. 7,12) and the iambe (which may or may not have been accompanied by music). (New Pauly)

So these basic volumes cannot agree on a how to arrive at a distinction or not. Should I noodle with this article I'll be sure to respect its constitution as intended by the framer.  ^davidiad_.:τ 22:05, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, that's what I mean: it's incorrect procedure for editors to arrive at an exclusive definition if RS don't, and if one can find standard anthologies like that of Lattimore that include short poems written in iambic and elegiac meters. I'm not sure many of our readers will be hanging out with people who would look down their noses at Richmond Lattimore as an uneducated oaf (I myself would flee the company of such, at any rate). Rather, the nature of the ancient distinctions among melic, elegy, and iambus should be explained. Actually, my understanding is that it's a modern distinction to divorce song and chant, which the range of meaning of carmen in Latin points to. And a distinction by the Alexandrians doesn't necessarily hold anyway: The "song culture" approach views occasion (such as the symposium) and subject matter (such as the vagaries of erotic life) as a meaningful context in which melic, elegy, and iambus interact as a poetic tradition: [1] [2] [3] It would be different if the article were called "melic poetry," but it's called "Greek lyric" in order to explain the modern term that encompasses these three forms. Cynwolfe (talk)

And Wikipedia's various articles on elegy are a mess: I can't even remember what they're all called. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:50, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

... I'm on board, and the intro to the Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric, which includes Iambus and Elegy, has a nice discussion of just how one approaches this topic and why we're having this conversation. I think the closest we come to an elegy article is elegiac couplet. By the way, if you want a truly maddening experience, let's discuss the difference between an elegy and an epigram in elegiacs.  ^davidiad_.:τ 23:10, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I just ditched the mention of dialects introducing the list since the inclusion of the early elegists and iambographers actually made the list split between Ionic and Doric, with two shakes of Aeolic. I'll try to quickly cobble together on dialects this evening, though this would ideally be treated as part of the broader question of genre which you allude to above, including occasion, meter, meters etc.  ^davidiad_.:τ 23:36, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I'll try to expand this article over the course of the next two weeks, if you promise to keep an eye on me and rap me across the snout if I drift in overly specialized directions. But, for now, is it acceptable to delete the list? Also, do you have access to Herington's Sather Lectures, the zygote, if I remember well, of this "song culture" craze?  ^davidiad_.:τ 00:09, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, delete: but it occurs to me the list could be a way to distinguish among the three strands. It could be structured into sections by melic, elegy, and iambus. (I'm not really into the elegy/epigram question except as it pertains to Latin literature, where Catullus is a point of bifurcation for love elegy vs. Martial—but the fourth book of Propertius and Ovid's Fasti raise a whole other set of questions about elegy and its relation to epic.) Anyway, I won't be doing anything else to the article as long as Roman satire stays red. I just couldn't have a redlink to Greek lyric in the section on "Literature" at Roman Empire, where actually the strict meaning of "lyric" is intended, so I've probably created uselessness. (Oh, no zygote, as far as I know.) Cynwolfe (talk) 01:00, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Bibliography

I'm beginning to expand the article from the roots up with a select bibliography and think it necessary to record an appeal in writing: Greek lyric is uncommonly burdened by translations and "interpretations" by every crawdad in the swamp. Let's keep that section of the bibliography limited to notable and scholarly collections focused upon Greek lyric, please. That is, if Nobel Prize winner X wrote a poem "after Sappho" for some Sunday paper once, that can probably be omitted, no? As for translations that aren't published on recognized classical presses or in series of translations known to be of high quality, I'd like the threshold for notability to be at least a bluelink for the author.  ^davidiad_.:τ 20:42, 29 September 2012 (UTC)