Generic Enrichment, Reader Expectation, and Metapoetic Trees
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GENERIC ENRICHMENT, READER EXPECTATION, AND METAPOETIC TREES IN HORACE’S ODES by John Joseph Scanlon B.A. in Greek and Latin, Catholic University of America, 2005 M.A. in Classics, University of Pittsburgh, 2009 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2014 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by John Joseph Scanlon It was defended on March 25th, 2014 and approved by Edwin D. Floyd, Professor, Department of Classics Dennis Looney, Professor, Department of French and Italian D. Mark Possanza, Associate Professor, Department of Classics Dissertation Director: Mae J. Smethurst, Professor, Department of Classics ii Copyright © by John Joseph Scanlon 2014 iii Professor Mae J. Smethurst GENERIC ENRICHMENT, READER EXPECTATION, AND METAPOETIC TREES IN HORACE’S ODES John Joseph Scanlon, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2014 Generic enrichment, sometimes known as Kreuzung der Gattungen, is a well-known feature of Roman poetry that plays an integral role in Horatian lyric. This study explores Horace’s use of metapoetic trees as a tool for enacting and representing his attempts at generic enrichment in the Odes. After reviewing the traditional origins of genre theory in classical literature and attributing generic enrichment to an Alexandrian and Roman desire to enhance the value of their poetry, this study reconciles the apparent conflict between generic enrichment and prescriptive, invariable literary kinds by recasting genre as a set of expectations shared between author and audience in a continual and ever-evolving literary dialogue. Having done so, this study then reviews the ancient poets’ use of programmatic trees before specifically discussing their potential use by Horace as a means of engaging with the generic expectations of his audience. As proof, this study continues by recasting Odes 2.13, Horace’s poem celebrating his near-death escape from a falling tree, as a generic manifesto which reflects Horace’s successful integration of epic, elegy, and tragedy into the entirety of the Odes. After revealing the multi-generic nature of Odes 2.13, this study concludes by showing how Horace employs metapoetic trees throughout the remainder of the Odes, and particularly within the three poems which revisit the falling tree iv Professor Mae J. Smethurst episode, to transform the divinities to whom Horace attributes his salvation (Faunus, the Muses, and Liber) into symbols of the very genres he has adapted to his lyric verse. In doing so, Horace establishes an interconnected web of arboricentric poems spanning the Odes which comments on the generically enriched nature of Horatian lyric. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ix 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1 2.0 GENRE, GENERIC ENRICHMENT, AND AUDIENCE EXPECTATION 11 2.1 GENRE: ORIGINS TO ALEXANDRIA 12 2.2 HORACE AND GENRE: ARS POETICA 73-88 21 2.3 PREVIOUS SCHOLARSHIP ON GENRE IN HORACE 24 2.4 REFLECTION ON PRIOR SCHOLARSHIP 42 2.5 GENRE AS AUDIENCE EXPECTATION 44 2.6 LYRIC EXPECTATIONS 47 3.0 TREES AND GENERIC ENRICHMENT 58 3.1 PRELIMINARY NOTES ON UNUSUAL TREES 58 3.1.1 Unexpected Arbores: Vine and Ivy 59 3.1.2 Unforgotten Arbores: Ships 61 3.2 METAPOETIC TREES 65 3.2.1 General Metapoetic Trees in Horace 67 3.2.2 Horatian Trees and Generic Enrichment 72 3.3 METAPOETIC SHIPS 77 3.3.1 General Usage of the Ship of Poetry 77 vi 3.3.2 Ships as Generic Recusationes 81 3.3.3 Horace’s Use of the Ship of Poetry 84 3.4 GENERIC TREE/SHIP INTERACTION IN THE ODES 89 4.0 GENERIC ENRICHMENT IN ODES 2.13 99 4.1 PRIOR GENERIC ANALYSIS OF ODES 2.13 100 4.2 A GENERIC PRELUDE: ODES 2.1-12 102 4.3 THE GENERICALLY SUGGESTIVE METER OF ODES 2.13 110 4.4 ODES 2.13.1-12: IAMBIC 112 4.5 ODES 2.13.13-20: LYRIC 115 4.6 ODES 2.13.21-32: EPIC AND ELEGY 117 4.6.1 “Lyric” Models: Sappho and Alcaeus 118 4.6.2 Epic Proserpina 125 4.6.3 Elegiac Aeacus 128 4.6.4 The Epic Vulgus 132 4.6.5 Final Thoughts on Odes 2.13.21-32 135 4.7 ODES 2.13.33-40: TRAGEDY 136 4.7.1 Unhelpful Underworld Allusions 139 4.7.2 Prometheus, Eumenides, and Tantalus 145 4.7.3 Orion and Cerberus 152 4.8 MOVING BEYOND ODES 2.13 159 4.8.1 The Puzzle of Horace’s Salvation 160 4.8.2 A Clarifying Comparison with Odes 1.32 164 5.0 THE GENERIC GODS OF HORACE’S ODES 170 vii 5.1 FAUNUS AND ELEGY 170 5.1.1 Faunus, God of Trees, Ships, and Love 171 5.1.2 Lyric, Elegy, and the Sea of Love 179 5.1.3 Faunus, “the God who Controls the Sea” in Odes 1.5 182 5.1.4 Conclusion: Faunus 189 5.2 THE MUSES AND EPIC 191 5.2.1 The Epic Connotations of “Musa” 193 5.2.2 Named Muses, Harmonization, and Instruments 195 5.2.3 The Meaning of “Camena” 200 5.2.4 Epic and Lyric in Odes 3.4 and 1.12 202 5.2.5 Conclusion: Muses 210 5.3 LIBER AND TRAGEDY 211 5.3.1 Liber’s Generic Potential 211 5.3.2 Political Anxiety in Odes 3.8 213 5.3.3 Examples of Tragic Civil War in the Odes 217 5.3.4 Linking Liber to Civil War in the Odes 221 5.3.5 Conclusion: Liber 225 5.4 LOOKING BACK TO ODES 2.13 225 BIBLIOGRAPHY 227 viii PREFACE It is only fitting that a study of generic enrichment should recognize the many contributors whose combined efforts have helped to bring this dissertation to completion. My most heartfelt thanks go to my dissertation director and committee for their invaluable guidance and abounding patience. I also owe much gratitude to the entire faculty and staff of the Department of Classics at the University of Pittsburgh for providing me with an outstanding education, and to the faculty and staff of the Department of Greek and Latin at the Catholic University of America for laying the foundations for my career in classics, especially Stratis Papaioannou and William McCarthy with whom I first studied Horace. I would also like to thank my first Latin teacher, John Buettler, for helping me discover my passion for antiquity, my graduate student colleagues in the Classics Department at the University of Pittsburgh for their friendship and insight, and the undergraduate members of Eta Sigma Phi at the University of Pittsburgh whose enthusiasm for the ancient world has been a constant source of inspiration. I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to all of my friends and family members for supporting me throughout my academic career, but I must single out my parents, Joseph and Despina, and my brother, Christopher, for their never-ending love and constant encouragement throughout my life. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Emily, without whom I could achieve nothing: sume superbiam quaesitam meritis, Melpomene. ix 1.0 INTRODUCTION Ever since their traditional origins in the writings of Plato the concept of separate literary kinds and the notion of generic propriety, the idea that certain genres should treat certain subjects in certain ways, has been an important element of both ancient and modern literary criticism.1 Equally as familiar is the reality that genres often defy such attempts at compartmentalization since many works of literature purposefully deviate from their expected generic boundaries by coopting generically “unsuitable” subject matter or methods. Harrison’s study of this 2 phenomenon, which he calls “generic enrichment,” explains: I define ‘generic enrichment’ as the way in which generically identifiable texts gain literary depth and texture from detailed confrontation with, and consequent inclusion of elements from, texts which appear to belong to other literary genres....The general concept of generic enrichment, of the creative confrontation of different literary genres, is not a radical innovation either in classical scholarship or in wider genre theory; the name is a convenient new label for a familiar general idea. Under what guise has this “familiar general idea” previously been known? Fantuzzi and Hunter tell us that earlier scholarship used negative terminology (“generic contamination,” “generic corruption,” “generic confusion,” etc.) when speaking about this process because the 3 Alexandrians who practiced it seemed to have no worthwhile reason for such rule breaking: The concept of the ‘contamination of literary genres’ has often, and rightly, been identified as one of the distinctive characteristics of the refined poetry which flourished in the Alexandria of Callimachus in the first half of the third century BC. Much less correctly, however, such ‘contamination’ has at times been associated with an intellectualizing pursuit of novelty at all costs, with a ludic and subversive sophistication which was wholly preoccupied with books and only too ready to sacrifice the traditional literary system. Arid intellectualism, experimentalism and arbitrariness are indeed the qualities most often 1 On the Platonic origins of genre theory in western literary criticism see section 2.1. 2 Harrison (2007) 1. 3 Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 17-8. 1 thought to characterize Alexandrian ‘contamination’, though the modern scholarly sense of deliberate generic arbitrariness of Hellenistic poetry in fact rather hardened over time. A. Couat in 1882, Ph. E. Legrand in 1898, R. Heinze in 1919, and L. Deubner in 1921, still spoke, respectively, of ‘mélange’, of ‘confusion des genres’, of ‘Gemisch’ and of ‘Mischung’ of genres, without pointing to a deliberate authorial policy.