Parallel session 3, panel 1: Memory as a narrative device

(Thursday 21^st June, 2.15-4.15pm)

Aristophanic "games of memory"
Alessandro Armocida (University of Padua)

In this paper, the concept of ‘memory’ is considered not as a fictional theme, but as a resource used by Aristophanes to create comic effects. I focus on some Aristophanic jokes which can be described as “games of memory”, in which former dramatic plays are quoted almost verbatim and therefore required, to be effective, the memory of the audience. In specific, I examine those games of memory which can be found in the satire against the general Lamachus, protagonist of various scenes in the Acharnians and target of the poet’s satire in the Peace and in the Knights.

In the Acharnians, Lamachus is a belligerent braggart whose exterior ostentation hides his ineptitude. This image is created mostly through explicit jokes and openly comic scenes. In the Peace, however, Aristophanes recalls it by creating subtle games of memory: when Trygaeus describes the frightful personification of Πόλεμος, he does so by using the same expression used by Lamachus’ servant to describe his master in the Acharnians. The poet, therefore, brings the audience to identify Lamachus with Πόλεμος itself.

The words used by the servant, in their turn, were an almost verbatim quotation of Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes and they had already been used as a game of memory. In the Aeschylean drama, these words were used to describe Tydaeus, one of the heroes of the legendary expedition. But Tydaeus was also the name chosen by Lamachus for his son. By quoting that lines of the tragedy, not only did Aristophanes intend to attack Lamachus’ bellicism, but he also mocked him for giving his son a rare and grandiose name. Furthermore, in the following verses of the Aeschylean drama, after a long description of Tydaeus’ ostentatious equipment, the king Eteocles claims that he is not scared by the mere appearance of his opponent. It seems that Aristophanes, by applying the comic mechanism of the qualis pater talis filius, is predicting for Tydaeus the same future of bravado of his father.

Finally, I suggest a possible interpretation for some lines of the Knights, whose major target is the demagogue Cleon. In the Paphlagonian-Cleon’s description of the goddess Athenasome textual elements seem to suggest that Aristophanes created another game of memory referred to the Acharnians and to the satire against Lamachus: if this hypothesis is accepted, the goddess Athena described by Paphlagonian-Cleon becomes the divine equivalent of Lamachus in the Acharnians. With this game of memory, therefore, Aristophanes enriches the explicit satire against Cleon with a subtler attack against Lamachus, who belonged, it is well known, to Cleon’s faction.

Testing the Reader’s Memory: The Use and Effect of Repeated Vocabulary in Dares Phrygius
Marc Bonaventura (University of Cambridge)

Modern scholars are united in condemning the literary merit of Dares Phrygius’ De Excidio Troiae Historia. Criticisms include the text’s ‘barbarous’ Latin, basic vocabulary, tedious repetition, and compressed language. However, this paper will seek to rehabilitate the perception of the author’s use of vocabulary. It will argue that, although the range of vocabulary in the text is rudimentary, the author employs repetition in a sophisticated manner to invite the reader to identify associations between a broad variety of events, some of which are inherently connected, others seemingly unrelated.

This paper will examine the four principal effects of repeated vocabulary in the text. First, it can draw attention to a particular theme. For instance, the continual references to and accusations of iniuriae (1-6, 8, 11, 15, 17) highlight the exchange of insult, offence, and violence which culminates in the Trojan War. In addition, it can connect emotional states, as in the aftermath of Helen’s abduction, where the same verb is used in close succession to describe Priam consoling Helen (consolatus est, 11) and Agamemnon reassuring Menelaus (consolatus est, 11). Another function of repeated vocabulary is to generate intimate bonds between characters. The deaths of Hector and Penthesilea, at the hands of Achilles and Neoptolemus respectively, are linked by shared vocabulary (sauciavit… dolore accepto, 24; sauciat… dolore accepto, 36), indicating a close connection between Achilles and his son. Finally, it can also produce dramatic irony, as when Alexander and Menelaus both gaze in wonder at each other’s fleet (utrique… aspexerunt se, 9) shortly before Alexander and Helen fall in love after gazing at one another (se utrique respexissent, 10).

Although Dares’ Historia is narrated chronologically, this paper will argue that a broad array of subtle allusions and references to past and future events lurks beneath the surface, largely through the repetition of vocabulary. The author’s use of repeated vocabulary is sophisticated and tests the memory of the reader, as only an intelligent and attentive reader would identify the patterns embedded in the text and the associations which they generate.

A shameful memory: Deianira and the distorted narration of Hercules’ deeds in Ovid’s Heroides 9
Simona Martorana (Durham University)

Ovid’s Heroides are staged as love letters, written by mythological female characters to their partners. Long neglected by Ovidian scholars, who stigmatised them as repetitive in patterns and lacking in originality, the Heroides have only undergone a revaluation within the last few decades. In particular, beginning from the 2000s, they have been profitably examined through categories pertaining to modern literary criticism, including intertextuality and intratextuality, as well as through psychological or gender-based approaches. According to these approaches, the letters may be interpreted as examples of écriture féminine, which gives expression to female voices, in spite of the male poet who wrote them.

Following this route, my paper will focus on Heroides 9, arranged as a letter written to Hercules by Deianira. She claims that he has fallen in love with Iole – after having had love affairs with many other women during his travels – and thus forgotten his wife. After providing a short overview of the contents of the letter, I will examine certain specific lines, namely 74-118, where Hercules is said to have become effeminate, and even to have performed female tasks (74-81; 101-118). These tasks, which include him cross-dressing, not only represent an ironic amplification of the elegiac topos of the servitium amoris, but are also in opposition to Hercules’ traditional ‘heroic’ labours (84-100).

Such an emphatic antithesis is the result of Deianira’s selective use of the previous mythological tradition concerning Hercules, and leads to the construction of a new, distorted version of the story. This reconstructed story no longer aims to celebrate the glorious deeds of a hero, but rather portray him as a weak and effeminate character, ultimately resulting in a reversal of roles between female and male attitudes, as well as an inversion of performative acts within the marital relationship. This role-reversal contributes to the creation of a new ‘memory’ with respect to Hercules’ story, which challenges the pre-existing tradition, and must be seen as the ultimate product of a feminine voice.

Select Bibliography

- Casali S. (1995), Heroidum epistula IX: Deianira Herculi, Firenze

- Cavarero A. (2000), Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, translated and with an introduction by P.A. Kottman, New York

- Cixous E. (1976), “The Laugh of Medusa”, translated into English by K. Cohen and P. Cohen in The University of Chicago Press 1.4, 875-893

- Fulkerson L. (2005), The Ovidian Heroine as Author: Reading, Writing, and Community in the Heroides, Cambridge

- Irigaray L. (1985), This Sex Which is Not One, translated by C. Porter, with C. Burke, Ithaca

- Jacobson H. (1974), Ovid’s Heroides, Princeton

- Kennedy D.F. (2002), “Epistolarity: The Heroides”, in P.R. Hardie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, Cambridge, 217-32

- Kristeva J. (1980), Desire in Language. A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art; edited by L.S. Roudiez; translated by T. Gora, A. Jardine, L.S. Roudiez, Oxford

- Lindheim S. (2003), Mail and Female. Epistolary Narrative and Desire in Ovid’s Heroides, Madison

- Murgatroyd P. (2014), “Wit, Humour and Irony in Heroides 9”, CQ 64.2, 853-55

- Spentzou E. (2003), Readers and Writers in Ovid’s Heroides: Transgressions of Genre and Gender, Oxford

Meminisse iuvat, but not always: memory, fallible narratives and unreliable narrators in the Achilleid (Ach. 2.94-167)
Julene Abad Del Vecchio (University of Manchester)

At the end of the Achilleid, Achilles retells of his heroic training under the care of the centaur Chiron, prompted by Diomedes’ question concerning the hero’s childhood and subsequent rearing. The hero begins a wondrous tale of martial feats of precocious and hyperbolic heroism, but an aptly deployed narratorial interjection at the beginning of his story points us towards Achilles’ reticence in speaking: the shame of having donned feminine garments is palpable. In conjunction with this, the brilliant ending of the poem (2.166-167: hactenus annorum, comites, elementa meorum / et memini et meminisse iuvat: scit cetera mater) and the failure of mentioning the cross-dressing at Scyros have led scholars to believe rightly that Achilles is performing a damnatio memoriae of the whole transvestism episode: what happens on Scyros stays on Scyros (Hinds, 2016; Heslin, 2016). Firstly, in this paper, I will examine Achilles’ role as an unreliable narrator à la Nestor in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Achilles picks and mixes the stories that he gets to re-tell about himself, and I will put forth some of the reasons, besides self-aggrandisement, as to why the character can be seen as donning the mantle of untrustworthy storyteller. Secondly, I wish to proffer some further thoughts on the use of memini in the Achilleid. Memory in the poem is intertwined almost exclusively with poetic memory and the previous literary tradition, and I will analyse how the last line of the poem elicits a reaction to both Virgil and Ovid.