Show Business: Deixis in Fifth-Century Athenian Drama

Show Business: Deixis in Fifth-Century Athenian Drama by David Julius Jacobson A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mark Griffith, Chair Professor Donald Mastronarde Professor Leslie Kurke Professor Mary-Kay Gamel Professor Shannon Jackson Spring 2011 Show Business: Deixis in Fifth-Century Athenian Drama Copyright 2011 by David Julius Jacobson Abstract Show Business: Deixis in Fifth-Century Athenian Drama by David Julius Jacobson Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark Griffith, Chair In my dissertation I examine the use of deixis in fifth-century Athenian drama to show how a playwright’s lexical choices shape an audience’s engagement with and investment in a dramatic work. The study combines modern performance theories concerning the relationship between actor and audience with a detailed examination of the demonstratives ὅδε and οὗτος in a representative sample of tragedy (and satyr play) and in the full Aristophanic corpus, and reaches conclusions that aid and expand our understanding of both tragedy and comedy. In addition to exploring and interpreting a number of particular scenes for their inter-actor dynamics and staging, I argue overall that tragedy’s predilection for ὅδε , a word which by definition conveys a strong spatio- temporal presence (“this <one> here / now”), pointedly draws the spectators into the dramatic fiction. The comic poet’s preference for οὗτος (“that <one> just mentioned” / “that <one> there”), on the other hand, coupled with his tendency to directly acknowledge the audience individually and in the aggregate, disengages the spectators from the immediacy of the tragic tetralogies and reengages them with the normal, everyday world to which they will return at the close of the festival. I begin Chapter 1 with an overview of previous scholarship on the subject of deixis, from the ancient grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus’ study on the syntax of pronouns, to the German psychologist Karl Bühler’s seminal book Sprachtheorie (1934), which posits that all deictic expressions refer to a field of reference at whose center (the Origo ) are the words “here,” “now,” and “I,” to more recent work on the subject both in the fields of modern socio-linguistics and performance studies. To establish the differences and similarities in linguistic (and performative) usage between playwrights and genres I distinguish between eight types of deixis: first person, second person, spatial, person / object, anaphora, cataphora, situational, and temporal. The four most common types (spatial, person / object, anaphora, cataphora) are discussed in Chapters 2-4. In Chapter 2, I examine the language of spatial reference in terms of “macro space,” the larger spatial setting of a drama (city, region, country), and “micro space,” whatever the stage building is declared to represent. While tragedy and satyr play frequently refer to the imagined location of the dramatic action, and thus seek to create a space which includes the audience, in comedy not only are demonstratives seldom employed to 1 acknowledge where the characters are, but when they are used they usually serve to unify the dramatic space and time with the larger civic space of real-life Athens. In addition to these larger generic issues, I examine the phrase “this house” over the course of Aeschylus’ Oresteia , showing that the intense focus on the skene as the epicenter of murder in Agamemnon and Choephori necessarily disappears in Eumenides , for it is only by functionally removing the House (and Apollo’s temple), deemphasizing it as an important, meaningful space, and replacing it with a larger, civic space (Athens) and institution (the Areopagite council) that discord can be resolved without further violence and competing social interests can be effectively reintegrated and harmonized. I study “person deixis” and “object deixis” in Chapter 3. In drama, the proximal demonstrative ὅδε is used almost by default to refer to people and to objects. When οὗτος is used of a prop, in each case the demonstrative either reflects the speaker’s distance from the object or is markedly second person (“that of yours”). I also examine the performative dimension of the vocative οὗτος , used to hail one whose attention is turned elsewhere. The consistency of this usage permits us a clearer understanding of the staging and meaning of several scenes, for example Helen 1627ff., where Theonoe’s Attendant can plausibly be eliminated as an actor onstage. In comedy, where this usage is most prevalent, I challenge the notion that οὗτος is normally pejorative, arguing instead that word order and the larger constructions in which this vocative occurs lend the word its various shades of meaning. Speaking more generally, I also show that tragedy uses demonstrative reference selectively to highlight particular people and objects within a play, making them focal points of the dramatic action and plot (e.g., Agamemnon’s corpse, Orestes’ lock of hair, Medea’s children), whereas comedy flits more indiscriminately from one object or person to the next, and that this difference in focus is generic and speaks to the type of audience engagement of each genre. In Chapter 4, I address anaphoric and cataphoric reference. The normal way to refer back in the discourse (i.e., “anaphorically”) in Greek is, of course, with οὗτος ; ὅδε regularly looks forward (= “cataphora”). As grammar books have long noted, when ὅδε is used anaphorically it indicates a speaker’s elevated emotional state. I begin by discussing cataphora in tragedy and satyr play—anaphora is treated in Chapter 5—before offering a detailed analysis of these two types of reference in Aristophanes. A cross-genre comparison reveals that while ὅδε is used more often than οὗτος in tragedy and satyr play, particularly in anaphoric reference, Aristophanes rarely uses ὅδε to refer backward. When he does, it is always either paratragic or in a scene of intense excitement. Based on the types of uses found in Aristophanes we are thus afforded a clear view of the rhetorical and emotional effects of “normal” tragic diction; the relative infrequency of ὅδε in Aristophanes appears, then, to confirm at the linguistic level the observation that comedy is less emotionally engaging than tragedy or satyr play. Or, to put it another way, the exceptional frequency of ὅδε in tragedy and satyr play (much the highest rate for any Greek literary genre) creates an intensity and immediacy that necessarily draws the audience strongly into the fictional world of these plays. I begin Chapter 5 by providing a systematic analysis of anaphoric uses of the proximal demonstrative, and then step back to consider the audience’s overall experience in 2 witnessing dramatic performances in the Great Dionysia (and Lenaia). I suggest that this experience is analogous to the act of “sacred pilgrimage” ( theoria ), wherein a member of the community would journey abroad, witness something, and return home with an expanded world-view to share with his city. That is, the theater audience progresses from a sense of inclusion in the manifold worlds of the tragic tetralogies, brought about in large part by spatial and anaphoric uses of ὅδε , toward a subsequent disengagement from these other times and places achieved by the comic performances through, amongst other things, a less intense spatial focus, more direct audience address, and colloquial diction. Athens and her citizens thus reap the political, social, and psychological benefits of theoria by traveling to the other places (and times) imaginatively experienced at the dramatic festivals, and all without ever leaving the theater. Following my final chapter are appendices, organized by author and play (A. Oresteia ; S. Ant ., OT , Phil .; E. Med ., Hipp ., Or ., Cyc .; all of Aristophanes), that list every instance of ὅδε and οὗτος in these works. Each entry contains the line number, the word, the type of deixis, and to what it refers. Next to the word I have indicated whether it is a proximal demonstrative or a medial demonstrative by using the letters “p” and “m,” respectively. When these words are suffixed with –ί I have underlined the letter. 3 Dedication In memory of Corinne Sinclair Crawford i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract 1 Dedication i Table of Contents ii Acknowledgments iv Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Spatial Deixis 27 I. Tragedy and Satyr Play I.1. Macro Space: City, Region, Country 33 I.2. Skene 34 I.3. Scene Change in Eumenides 42 I.4. Other Spaces 47 I.5. Spatial Adverbs 50 I.5.a. Adverbial Uses of τάδε 50 I.5.b. Adverbial Uses of τῇδε and ταύτῃ 54 I.5.c. δεῦρο 55 II. Aristophanes 57 II.1. Macro Space: City, Region, Country 57 II.2. Skene 59 II.3. Other Spaces 63 II.4. Spatial Adverbs 64 II.4.a. Adverbial Uses of τῇδε and ταύτῃ 64 II.4.b. δεῦρο 65 III. Conclusions 66 Chapter 3: Person / Object Deixis 69 I. Person Deixis in Tragedy and Satyr Play 69 I.1. First person οὗτος 70 I.2. Second person οὗτος 70 I.3. Third person οὗτος 81 I.4. Contempt 83 I.4.a. Euripides 83 I.4.b. Sophocles 86 ii I.4.c. Aeschylus 87 I.5. Person Deixis and Conceptions of Tragic Space 87 II. Person Deixis in Aristophanes 90 II.1. First Person οὑτοσί 92 II.2. Third Person οὑτοσί 93 II.3. Second Person οὗτος 95 II.4. Third Person οὗτος 100 III. Object Deixis in Tragedy and Satyr Play 103 III.1. Sophocles’ Philoctetes 103 III.2. Prop- and Corpse-reference 106 IV. Object Deixis in Aristophanes 108 IV.1. οὗτος 108 V. Conclusions 110 Chapter 4: Anaphora / Cataphora 112 I. Cataphora in Tragedy and Satyr Play 112 I.1.

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