Metamorphoses of Songs: Choral Performances in Postclassical Greece

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This research project proposes a change of paradigm in the interpretation of the relation between poetic production and performance-based communication media in Hellenistic and later Greek culture. Literary studies so far have circumscribed the central role of the so-called 'song-and-dance culture' in Greece to the archaic and classical periods, that is up to the mid 4th century BCE. The general emphasis on the great importance of the book as the chief medium of poetic communication in the Hellenistic world has often led to the evaluation of writing as a surrogate activity for the lost original experience of song-and-dance culture. In this context the persistence of some features of 'performance' culture has usually been explained as a cultural remnant surviving in peripheral areas, or as 'popular' and marginalised. This neglects the abundant evidence provided by inscriptions and other sources attesting not only to the continuity but also to the huge prestige of civic choral performances throughout the Hellenistic period and, as I will argue, its great impact on 'literary' production. Based on a thorough examination of the evidence I will offer a radical reassessment of the current interpretative paradigms for this key moment in the evolution of Western culture, arguing for a more complex and fruitful exchange between the two different kinds of media.