Metamorphoses of Songs: Choral Performances in Postclassical Greece

本研究项目提出了希腊化和后来的希腊文化中诗歌生产与以表演为基础的传播媒介之间关系的解释范式的转变。到目前为止，文学研究一直将希腊所谓的歌舞文化的核心作用局限于古代和古典时期，即公元前4世纪中叶。由于普遍强调这本书作为希腊化世界诗歌传播的主要媒介的重要性，经常导致人们将写作作为失去的歌舞文化原始经验的替代活动。在这种背景下，“表演”文化的某些特征的持续存在通常被解释为生存在边缘地区的文化残余物，或者是“流行的”和被边缘化的。这忽视了铭文和其他来源提供的大量证据，这些证据不仅证明了整个希腊化时期民间合唱表演的连续性，而且证明了它的巨大威望，正如我将争辩的那样，它对‘文学’生产的巨大影响。基于对证据的彻底检验，我将对当前西方文化演变的关键时刻的解释范式进行彻底的重新评估，主张在这两种不同的媒体之间进行更复杂和更有成效的交流。

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.