Staged Narrative: Poetics and the Messenger in Greek Tragedy

Acknowledgments

This book has been a long time in the making, and many people have lent a helping hand, knowingly and unknowingly. The initial impetus that set me on this path came from a graduate seminar at Cornell University , taught by Patricia Easterling. I thank her for sharing her inspired approach to Greek tragedy and for pointing the way. The ideas originally spawned in that seminar eventually led to a dissertation from which the present book took shape. I owe a debt of gratitude to Pietro Pucci for supervising that earlier work. I have benefited greatly from his vast learning , helpful criticisms, and generous spirit. I thank also those whose paths crossed mine in the Cornell Classics department: Fred Ahl, Kevin Clinton, Gregson Davis, Judy Ginsburg, Ralph Johnson, David Mankin, Phillip Mitsis, and Jeffrey Rusten; their expertise and insight proved helpful on many occasions. I count myself lucky to have spent time in the charmed company of those who frequent the Centre Louis Gernet in Paris. In particular, Nicole Loraux, Jesper Svenbro, and Pierre VidalNaquet encouraged my work on this project. I thank as well members of the CorHaLi group who have often inspired me: Jean Bollack, David Bouvier, Pierre Judet de la Combe, Gregory Nagy, Philippe Rousseau, and Froma Zeitlin. Those who first taught me Greek some years ago at xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS UC Santa Cruz provided a sympathetic guiding hand as well as stimulation that has been a constant companion ever since: Norman O. Brown, Mary Kay Gamel, Gary Miles, and Laura Slatkin. Colleagues at Colby have provided a friendly and stimulating atmosphere, and they have improved this work in a variety of ways; I thank Jill Gordon, Kerill O’Neill, Hanna Roisman, Yossi Roisman, and Anindyo Roy. I thank also friends and colleagues who have contributed in ways great and small: Herta Blaukopf, Kurt Blaukopf, Peter Boffey, Tom Falkner, Nancy Felson, Franz Gruber, Peitsa Hirvonen, Paul Allen Miller, Jo(h)n Robinson/Appels, David Rosenbloom, Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, Seth Schein, Harry Walker, James C. White, and Nancy Worman. I have been fortunate to find myself in the able hands of Kate Toll, editor for the Press, quae acrius viam ad astra perlucida cernit. I thank the anonymous reviewers of the Press who saved me from error and improved this study with their astute criticisms and valuable comments. Lorraine Barrett and Robert Barrett have been loyal, true, and constant in the face of my incessant wandering. Finally, I thank Mary Beth Mills, without whom this book might never have come into being. Her talent for lucid analysis and elegant solution is paralleled only by her unending patience and uncanny good sense. Through all, she has encouraged and sustained me. Parts of this study have been presented at various meetings of the American Philological Association, the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, the Comparative Drama Conference, the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, and CorHaLi. I thank the members of those audiences for their many helpful remarks. Research support was provided by grants from the University of Mississippi. Portions of the introduction and chapter 1 have appeared in “Narrative and the Messenger in Aeschylus’ Persians,” American Journal of Philology 116 (1995) 539–57. An earlier version of chapter 3 appeared as “Pentheus and the Spectator in Euripides’ Bacchae,” American Journal of Philology xii / Acknowledgments 119 (1998) 337–60. This material is used courtesy of Johns Hopkins University Press. “Field of Vision” from Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966–1999 by Seamus Heaney, copyright © 1998 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Permission also granted by Faber and Faber Ltd. to reproduce Seamus Heaney’s “Field of Vision ” from his Seeing Things. Acknowledgments / xiii ...