Texts, Bodies, and Performance in Lucian by Lynn D Gallogly a Dissertation Submitted in Partial Satisfaction
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Figures of Speech: Texts, Bodies, and Performance in Lucian By Lynn D Gallogly 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 Mario Telò, Chair Professor Mark Griffith Professor James Porter Spring 2019 Abstract Figures of Speech: Text, Bodies, and Performance in Lucian By Lynn D Gallogly Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Berkeley Professor Mario Telò, Chair This dissertation examines four texts of Lucian of Samosata (Fisherman, Apology, On Dancing, and Herakles), with a focus on the representation of bodies and embodiment and their relation to speech, writing and performance. I argue that the representation of bodies is an important metaphor for how Lucian’s texts imagine their own reception, and for how they imagine the possibilities and limitations of reading, writing, performing, and spectating. The first two chapters each discuss a text in which the author uses the control and punishment of bodies as a framework for engaging with the reception and criticism of his own texts. Chapter One shows how the comic dialogue Fisherman imagines the interpretation of texts as a contentious process of securing control in which authors, readers, and texts seem to be able to influence one another in an almost physical or material way. Chapter Two examines how the Apology confronts a lack of alignment between the author and views expressed in an earlier text. I argue that this misalignment is characterized as a disruption to the connection between the author and his text that has caused him to lose control over its interpretation. Like Fisherman, the Apology imagines a kind of material connection among texts, authors, and readers, but suggests that securing physical and interpretive control over them is not always possible. Chapter Three discusses the dialogue On Dancing, demonstrating how it depicts pantomime as a space in which bodies transform and where the fluidity of a body is one of its more significant attributes. I argue that a central concern of this text is how dancer and audience interact and the influence that one can have upon the other. This emphasis on fluidity and transformation complicates the standard model of interpretation as the province of an individual interpreter who asserts control over a performer or particular text, and problematizes the concept of a body as an object or agent that can be interpreted in isolation from other bodies to which it is connected. 1 Chapter Four explores the intersection of language, bodies, interpretation, and control through the figure of Herakles in Lucian. I argue that this image of Herakles is used to represent both the possibility of multiple interpretative viewpoints, and also the power of language to constrain and control bodies, up to and including the speaker himself. These paradoxical threads are never fully resolved, but remain in unsettling tension, even in later reception and re-imaginings of this text. 2 Figures of Speech: Texts, Bodies, and Performance in Lucian Introduction In the opening of his 1990 article on sculpture and literary artifice in Lucian, James Romm observes offhandedly that “Lucian of Samosata … seldom abandons a rich metaphor before exploring every facet of its meaning.”1 Romm later adds that this process of turning a metaphor over and over to pick out new strands of meaning is often diffused across Lucian’s corpus, with variants on the same metaphor or image surfacing in multiple texts. Only by drawing together these diffuse pieces can one begin to identify all the facets of that metaphor and the strands of meaning it creates.2 This observation seems to me to articulate a particular challenge that Lucian’s texts present, one that extends beyond the specific kinds of reoccurring metaphors to which Romm refers. Unifying patterns in Lucian can often be elusive and difficult to grasp, whether because they only emerge from related references that are scattered across widely varying texts, or are simply difficult to follow within the twists and turns of a single text. But by framing Lucian’s literary strategy in this way, Romm also points to a possible interpretive strategy. That is, if the elusive author of these texts is returning again and again to the same rich metaphors, unraveling new strands of meaning, then perhaps it is the work of a reader and interpreter to do similarly: find the loose end of a thread and follow where it goes. This is how I would characterize the approach to reading Lucian that orients this dissertation. The thread that I follow across four different texts (Fisherman, Apology, On Dancing, Herakles) to explore different facets of meaning is the representation of bodies and their relation to speech, writing and performance. My attention to bodies concerns both how they are presented as meaningful objects that can be read and interpreted like texts, and the ways in which bodies are subject to material influence and change, particularly corporal punishment and physical harm. I argue that the representation of bodies serves as a metaphor for how Lucian’s texts imagine their own reception, and for how they imagine the possibilities and limitations of reading, writing, performing, and spectating. This reading of Lucian responds, albeit indirectly, to several themes in recent scholarship on Lucian.3 I characterize these themes as, first, the reading of Lucian as a multi-masked performer, and, second, the reading of Lucian as a creator and theorizer of fiction. I will discuss each briefly before giving an overview of the chapters in this dissertation. The many-masked Lucian emerges in part, I think, from the tantalizingly elusive presence of the author within the corpus that comes down to us under his name.4 Outside 1 Romm 1990: 74. 2 Romm 1990: 90 and n.44. 3 Here I focus primarily on scholarship from the past twenty years. For an overview of themes and concerns in earlier scholarship, as well as additional bibliography, see Macleod 1994. 4 Eighty-six individual texts or groups of texts under the name of Lucian have come down to us in the manuscript tradition, although authorship for a few of these is still i of these texts, there is little information about who the historical Lucian of Samosata might have been.5 Lucian’s texts offer glimpses of the author and his literary career, but there is never a straightforward relationship between narrator and author.6 Even the historical context that we can plausibly reconstruct for Lucian seems to lend itself to characterization of multiplicity and performativity. Simon Swain (2007) speaks of the “three faces of Lucian” – Syrian, Greek, and Roman – to describe the different facets of his cultural position.7 Lucian was born around 120 CE in the city of Samosata on the upper Euphrates River in what was then the Roman province of Syria, but which had only a few generations earlier been the kingdom of Commagene, a remnant of the Seleucid Empire. This elusive author thus emerges from a cultural context with multiple layers: the Aramaic-speaking Semitic population of the region, the influence of Greek culture and language from centuries of Seleucid rule, and the more recent presence of the Roman Empire. An additional layer of complexity comes from the prevailing trend in Greek literature and other aspects of elite culture in this period to look backwards towards an idealized Classical past.8 Lucian’s texts engage self-consciously with these different layers of identity, both personal and literary, commenting upon the identity of their debated. Spurious and uncertain texts are discussed in Karavas 2005: 22-25. See also Macleod 1994. 5 There is only one contemporary reference to an author named Lucian, in Galen, de epidem. 2.6.29 (this text survives only in the 9th century Arabic translation of Hunain ibn Ishaq). Galen identifies Lucian as a writer famous for forging some works of Heraclitus. The reference is discussed by Strohmaier 1976: 118-122; Baumbach and v. Möllendorff 2017: 15 quote Strohmaier’s German translation of the Arabic. Lucian has an in two later sources, Eunapius VS 2.1.9 (fourth century CE) and in the Suda 1.683 (tenth century CE), both of which make reference to titles of his surviving texts. 6 Baumbach and von Möllendorff 2017: 13-57 examine the evidence for Lucian’s biography within his texts and the difficulties of straightforwardly historicizing readings. Hall 1981: 1-63 has an extensive summary of earlier attempts to use Lucian’s texts to construct a biography, as well attempts to determine the chronology of the texts themselves. On the difficulties of author and narrator in Lucian, see also Whitmarsh 2001: 248–53 and 271–79; Goldhill 2002: 62–82; and Ní-Mheallaigh 2009: 22–23, 2010, and 2014: 128–31, 175–81, and 254–58. 7 The following summary draws from Swain 2007 and 1996. For another influential reading of Lucian within his historical context, see Jones 1986. 8 The classicism in Greek language and literature in the first through third centuries CE, often described as the “Second Sophistic,” is discussed in Bowie 1970, Anderson 1993, Swain 1996, and Whitmarsh 2001 and 2005; these works offer a good overview of thinking on this term and period has developed. Greek identity and culture under the Roman Empire has been explored from a variety of angles in a number of collected volumes on the topic: Goldhill 2001, Borg 2004, Konstan and Said 2006, Whitmarsh 2010, van Nijf and Alston 2011. Discussions of the relationship between identity and public presentation during this period have been significantly influenced by Gleason 1995.