Breaking the frame: from Catullus 64 to ancient metalepsis

拟议中的研究将导致对卡图卢斯64的评论，新编辑的文本，将发表在CUP系列剑桥经典文本和评论（“橙子”系列）。《卡图卢斯64》是一部微型史诗（只有400多行），创作于公元前世纪中期。《卡图卢斯64》是希腊和罗马文学中的一部微型史诗，它的叙事框架被打破。在一个误导性的开头暗示它将是关于阿尔戈英雄的，它讲述了阿喀琉斯的父母珀琉斯和忒提斯的会面和婚姻。然而，其中一半以上是对这对夫妇婚床的扩展描述（“ecphrasis”），床被上是被遗弃的阿里阿德涅的照片。这是一个非常不典型的ecphrasis：描绘阿里阿德涅发出一个冗长的讲话。当叙述回到婚礼时，命运女神唱了一首歌，预言阿喀琉斯英勇但血腥的功绩，诗突然以一个结论结束，叙述者哀叹自英雄时代以来文明的道德衰落。像卡图卢斯的其他诗歌一样，64对古典学术来说既重要又有问题。卡图卢斯是在罗马共和国晚期写作的，当时的政治环境与奥古斯都和帝国时期的政治环境大不相同。他的小语料库涵盖了大量的和不可预测的体裁范围，64，他最长的诗，总是给评论家带来自己的问题。现代的讨论，在文章和偶尔的专著中，追求各种各样的调查路线，其中一个特别明显的二分法是将64视为“关于”自身外部的东西-无论是卡图卢斯自己的情感生活还是他对时代的态度-以及那些将其视为“关于”自身诗歌性质的方面-例如，反措辞，互文性或叙事混乱。与此同时，这首诗的读者仍然依赖于不充分的评论，通常在范围上受到限制，因为它们出现在整个卡图兰语料库的评论中。拟议的评论将通过提供对这首诗的重要的新的文学解释来改变我们对卡图兰64的理解，理论上有意识的方法罗马诗歌和基于一个彻底的重新评估的问题，文本从规模的个别字向上。同时，它将成为希腊和罗马文学和文化史更广泛领域的研究人员和学生的重要，可靠的工具。它也将表明，评论仍然是经典中一种至关重要的形式，但应该通过自我批判的反思不断恢复活力：我将通过与另一位早期职业评论员合作为评论作家举办一个研讨会，重点是在他们职业生涯开始时的评论员，他们将在未来继续这种形式。卡图卢斯64的文学深度和复杂性的一个方面是它反复使用metropsis。后设是打破叙事层面之间的框架，例如作者和他的文本，或者床罩上的阿里阿德涅和凝视着她的婚礼宾客。这是一个最近才开始在经典中讨论的概念，但可能会导致对古代文学中关键现象的新鲜有趣的解释。为了促进这一领域的研究，我将召集一个关于希腊和罗马文本中的元移植的国际会议，再次与早期的职业同事合作，我将在卡图卢斯诗歌中发表自己的演讲。虽然主要的研究成果是针对学术界的，但有可能在一个影响活动计划中交流一些研究成果：在学校和美术馆演讲，在教育杂志上发表文章。

The proposed research will lead to a commentary on Catullus 64, with newly edited text, to be published in the CUP series Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries (the 'orange' series). Research on a recurring aspect of Catullus 64, metalepsis or the breaking of the narrative frame, will be used to launch a collaborative exploration of metalepsis in Greek and Roman literature.Catullus 64 is a miniature epic (just over 400 lines) from the mid-first century BC. After a misleading opening implying that it will be about the Argonauts, it narrates the meeting and marriage of Peleus and Thetis, parents of Achilles. More than half of it, however, is an extended description ('ecphrasis') of the couple's marriage bed, on the coverlet of which is a picture of the abandoned Ariadne. This is a very atypical ecphrasis: the depicted Ariadne utters a lengthy speech. When the narration returns to the wedding, the Fates sing a song prophesying Achilles' heroic but bloody exploits, and the poem suddenly ends with a conclusion in which the narrator laments the moral decline of civilisation since the heroic age.Like Catullus' other poetry, 64 is both central to and problematic for Classical scholarship. Catullus wrote under the late Roman Republic in political circumstances very different from those of the Augustan and imperial periods from which so much widely studied Latin poetry comes. His small corpus covers a large and unpredictable range of genres, and 64, his longest poem, has always created its own problems for critics. Modern discussions, in articles and occasional monographs, have pursued various lines of inquiry, with a particularly clear dichotomy between accounts that see 64 as 'about' something external to itself - whether Catullus' own emotional life or his attitude to his times - and those that see it as 'about' aspects of its own poetic nature - such as ecphrasis, intertextuality, or narrative confusion. Meanwhile, readers of the poem still rely on inadequate commentaries, usually constrained in scope by their appearance within commentaries on the whole Catullan corpus.The proposed commentary will transform our understanding of Catullus 64 by offering important new literary interpretations of the poem that are both informed by up-to-date, theoretically aware approaches to Roman poetry and based on a thoroughgoing reassessment of the problems of the text from the scale of the individual word upwards. Simultaneously, it will be an essential, reliable tool for researchers and students in the wider fields of Greek and Roman literature and cultural history. It will also demonstrate that commentary remains a form of essential importance in Classics, but one that should be constantly reinvigorated through self-critical reflection: I shall make a practical contribution to this by collaborating with another early career commentator to hold a workshop for commentary writers, with an emphasis on commentators at the beginning of their careers who will be taking the form forward in the future. One aspect of Catullus 64's literary depth and complexity is its recurring use of metalepsis. Metalepsis is the breaking of the frame between narrative levels, for instance an author and his text, or Ariadne on the coverlet and the wedding-guests who are gazing at her. It is a concept which has only recently begun to be discussed in Classics, but could lead to fresh and interesting interpretations of key phenomena in ancient literature. To stimulate research in this area I shall convene an international conference on metalepsis in a wide range of Greek and Roman texts, again collaborating with an early career colleague, and I shall speak myself on metalepsis across Catullus' poetry.While the main research outputs are aimed at the academic community, it will be possible to communicate some of the fruits of the research in a programme of impact activities: talks in schools and art galleries and articles in educational magazines.