-
Catalogues, Priamels, and Stanzaic Structure in Early Greek Elegy
- Transactions of the American Philological Association
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 135, Number 2, Autumn 2005
- pp. 249-265
- 10.1353/apa.2005.0017
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Catalogues and priamels figure prominently in the longer fragments of early Greek elegy. In this brief study I survey a half-dozen of these elegiac lists and show that the early poets regularly use a five-couplet stanza to create a formal structure for their compositions. In some cases the catalogues appear to be "set-pieces" adaptable in the midst of performance to a number of different contexts.