Space on the Move: The Travel of Narratology to Ancient Greek Lyric^[1]

Jo Heirman

University of Amsterdam

A Transgeneric and Diachronic Narratology: Narratology and Ancient Greek Lyric

Recently, two recent paradigm shifts have transformed narratology, which was originally developed for the analysis of modern novels. First of all, narratology has become transgeneric, not simply transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary, as it has been applied to such genres as epic poetry^[2] and lyric poetry. The latter was pioneered by the Hamburg scholars Peter Hühn, Jörg Schönert and Eva Müller-Zettelmann, whose work has triggered an ongoing flow of narratological studies of English and German lyric poetry from the sixteenth through the twentieth century.^[3] Their justification for applying narratology to lyric poetry are based on commonalities. They argue that "[n]arration is an anthropologically universal semiotic practice, independent of culture and period, used to structure experience and produce and communicate meaning, and is as such one of the basic operations at work even in lyric poetry" (Hühn-Schönert 1). In particular, they contend that the same narrative dimensions are at play in prose and lyric poetry, although not necessarily in the same way; for example, both use mediation, i.e. the presentation of events from a particular perspective. Arguing against the traditional assumption that lyric poetry renders a direct, unfiltered communication of experience, they highlight the self-referential artificiality of many lyric poems, which points at the mediated quality of the events experienced: characteristic for lyric poetry is the use of simultaneous narration, by which the impression is rendered as if the events are mediated at the moment they are experienced.^[4]

A more recent definition of narrativity adopted from Monika Fludernik would also support the argument for the relevance of the use of narratology to lyric poetry.^[5] Based on the observation that many twentieth-century novels are plotless and not centred on temporal progression, she argues that the traditional definition of narrativity as sequentiality, by which a narrative is considered a plot with a sequence of two or more events, is too restrictive.^[6] Because of the dominance of consciousness in novels of the past century, Fludernik proposes to redefine narrativity in terms of experientiality, by which the core of a narrative is considered to lie in the consciousness of a human protagonist and his emotional or physical reactions to the events he experiences. Interestingly, this reconceptualization of narrativity allows for the discussion of most lyric poetry from a narratological point of view, because, as Peter Hühn and Roy Sommer note in the Living Handbook of Narratology, "lyric poetry in the strict sense...typically features strings of primarily mental or psychological happenings perceived through the consciousness of single speakers and articulated from their position". 

The second paradigm shift concerns the "diachronization" of narratology. While narratology initially focused on nineteenth and twentieth century novels without any awareness of the historical dimension, Fludernik^[7] brought to the foreground the importance of diachronic developments in narrative techniques, by concentrating on developments in scene shifts throughout English literature. In the words of Fludernik herself, "Opening up narratology to diachronic inquiry in fact provides access to a terrain of research that has so far been charted only very superficially. In terms of the prospects afforded by diachronic narratology, a major breakthrough is imminent" ("Diachronization" 332). Her approach has been followed, for instance, by Hilary Dannenberg, who has investigated the development of the plot throughout the last four hundred years of English literature, as well as by Irene de Jong, who has examined the role of the narrator, focalization and time throughout ancient Greek literature.^[8]

In light of both these paradigm shifts and my own background as a classicist, I aim to take a narratological approach to ancient Greek lyric poetry from the seventh to the fifth century B.C. This poetry follows the Homeric epics about Troy and Odysseus (eighth century B.C.) and precedes the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (fifth century B.C.); its best known poets are Sappho, Solon and Pindar.^[9] My investigation of this theoretical transfer will focus on one case, namely "space", which has recently come to the foreground in cultural and literary studies.

The "Spatial Turn" and Narratology: The Symbolic Function of Space in Ancient Greek Lyric

Up until the twentieth century, time has been the dominant trope in the teleologically haunted Western humanities. The frameworks for understanding cultural progress privileged temporal stages, such as primitiveness to civilization and simplicity to complexity. At the end of the twentieth century, however, space began to demand its place next to time. This has been noted especially by philosophers like Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja, who focused on space as a social construct in relation to issues of power and knowledge. In a brief essay, "Des espaces autres", which was written in 1967 but published in 1984, Foucault announced that after the nineteenth century, which was dominated by a historical outlook, "l'époque actuelle serait peut-être plutôt l'époque de l'espace" (752). His prediction was accurate: the end of the twentieth century witnessed a "spatial turn" in humanities, which has led to a focus on space and its constitutive role in a variety of fields such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology and ethnography.^[10] It has by now been acknowledged that space is a social construct which is fundamental for our understanding of people's identity, public life, power structures and human-environment interactions. The shift in attention from time to space is also attested in literary studies. Until recently, space was neglected in favor of time in literary analysis. The reason for this neglect is probably a consequence of the influential idea of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his Laocoon (1766) that literature is essentially a temporal art - as opposed to spatial arts, such as painting or sculpture - a claim repeated by the narratologist Gérard Genette.^[11] From the end of the twentieth century onwards, however, space has become a "hot topic" in literary studies, as demonstrated by the proliferation of books on the essential role of space in a given genre.^[12] 

In narratology, however, as Marie-Laure Ryan notes in the Living Handbook of Narratology, "narrative space remains a relatively unexplored territory".^[13] Because of the focus on issues of time, narratological studies have paid much more attention to the relationship between time and space in the wake of Bakhtin's chronotope theory than to space itself.^[14] Consequently, narratology has often confined the function of space to that of narrative setting, of a scenic backdrop against which the narrated events take place.^[15] In some cases space has been attributed a characterizing function, when it tells us something about the behavior or milieu of a character.^[16] The cultural-symbolic values of spatial oppositions such as high-low, left-right or city-countryside have been discussed by Joost van Baak in the wake of the work by Yuri Lotman,^[17] but the symbolic function of space has not yet received sufficient attention. I will attempt to fill this gap, using ancient Greek lyric poetry as a case study and drawing on phenomenological theories of space and cognitive metaphor theory. In what follows I will distinguish between two sorts of symbolism of space, namely symbolic associations and symbolic form, on the basis of three types of space (or places), i.e. city, nature and sea, with examples taken from ancient Greek lyric poetry.

Phenomenology and Symbolic Associations of Space: Sea and Danger, Nature and Love

First of all, space can have symbolic associations, when it is semantically laden and expresses a certain idea. In ancient Greek lyric poetry, the sea is foremost associated with danger. One brief fragment of Archilochus (fragment 105), a poet from the seventh century B.C., illustrates this:^[18]

Γλαῦχ᾽, ὅρα· βαθὺς γὰρ ἤδη κύμασιν ταράσσεται 
πόντος, ἀμφὶ δ᾽ ἄκρα Γυρέων ὀρθὸν ἵσταται νέφος, 
σῆμα χειμῶνος. κιχάνει δ᾽ ἐξ ἀελπτίης φόβος.

"Look, Glaucus! Waves are already disturbing the deep sea, and a cloud stands straight round about the heights of Gyrae, a sign of storm. From the unexpected arises fear."^[19]

This poem is an example of the use of simultaneous narration typical for lyric poetry, as an upcoming sea storm is rendered as if it is experienced at the moment it takes place. Through the imperative "Look!" the narrator immediately urges the addressee, a man called Glaucus, to look at the seascape and, indirectly, the narratees to imagine the stormy sea scene. By bringing forth an image of the sea before an imminent storm the narrator evokes an atmosphere of impending danger. He reinforces it with the contrast between the depth of the sea and the height of the clouds in the sky as well as the heights of Gyrae. This is not a specific place, but a reference to the mythological story of Ajax , the heights of Gyrae serve as a resonance of the mythological story of Ajax being crushed by rocks from the heights of Gyrae on his return to Greece following the Trojan War, as told in the Odyssey, the famous Homeric epic of the eighth century B.C. (Odyssey 4.500-511).^[20] The storm is thus ominous, which explains why the narrator says it causes fear. The connection between danger and fear makes relevant the phenomenological theory of "lived space":^[21] through its associations with danger the sea turns into a "lived space", as it correlates with the emotions of fear by the human subjects at sea.

While the sea has symbolic associations with danger, nature has all sorts of erotic associations in ancient Greek lyric. These became standardized as literary motifs in later Greek and Latin literature. An example from ancient Greek poetry is the motif of the "meadow of love", which is associated with both virginal innocence and rape or abduction. It is the place where a female, typically a young and innocent virgin, finds herself, sometimes picking flowers, before being abducted by a man to another place, where she is raped.^[22]

Another example is the locus amoenus, a "pleasant place" in nature that typically consists of a garden or meadow, a spring, trees and shade.^[23] Although the motif is attested in the Homeric epics of the eighth century B.C., it only has strong erotic associations from ancient Greek lyric onwards. However, at this stage, the erotic associations are still very diverse and playfully handled. A case in point is fragment 286 of Ibycus, a poet of the sixth century B.C.:^[24]

The beginning of Ibycus' poem presents a locus amoenus scene of young girls. The connection of these girls with a garden, which is, like the girls, untouched, reveals that the locus amoenus has symbolic associations with youthful chastity. These are reinforced if we realise that elsewhere in ancient Greek lyric, such as Archilochus' Cologne Epode, a garden is a metaphor for female genitals.^[25] In this light, the "garden of girls" could even refer to the genitals of the girls, while the adjective "untouched" could indicate that the girls had never had sexual intercourse. At the same time, the poem hints at their future sexuality. This is clear from the references to "Cydonian apple-trees", of which the fruits are offered at ancient Greek marriages,^[26] and to "spring", a season linked to love in ancient Greek poetry.^[27] These associations of chastity with future sexuality makes phenomenological theories of space relevant: these reveal that the locus amoenus is a "lived space", as it serves to contrast with the passionate feelings of the narrator, which are rendered at the end of the poem.

Cognitive Metaphor Theory and the Symbolic Form of Space: The City as Metaphor and Personification

Besides possessing symbolic associations, space can also have a symbolic form as metaphor and personification. Narratology has only seldom seriously engaged with the study of metaphors. This is probably to be explained by the fact that metaphor was first considered typical for poetry and then, due to the work of George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Mark Turner,^[28] as a cognitive principle inherent to human thought rather than to literary texts. Only very recently, Benjamin Biebucyk, Gunther Martens, and Monika Fludernik^[29] have engaged in a narratological approach to literary metaphors, arguing that they have an important thematic function within the specific context of a particular narrative and require an active, hermeneutic response by the reader. In Charles Dickens' Little Dorritt, for instance, prison metaphors constitute a key theme of the plot, suggesting that life itself should be considered a prison. In small-scale lyric poetry, however, there is often only one single metaphor, which does not form part of a wider plot. To understand its function, cognitive metaphor studies are more helpful if used in relation to the poem as a whole.^[30] They speak of varying functions of metaphors, from a means to inform or explain something, i.e. as cognitive elucidation, to a means to persuade and express emotions indirectly. From the perspective of cognitive metaphor theory I turn to ancient Greek lyric, where it is especially the city that takes a symbolic form as metaphor. A recurrent city metaphor is that of capture: it is used either in a political context about the downfall of an aristocratic system or in an erotic context about "conquering" a partner. An example of the latter is taken from Archilochus' fragment 23 (lines 17-21):^[31]

The piece consists of a speech by a male narrator who addresses a woman and tries to convince her that accusations of sexual betrayal made against him are slander. The city metaphor should be interpreted in an erotic sense; by saying that men have never sacked the city that she captured, he makes clear that the woman is the only one with whom he has engaged in an erotic relationship and refutes the claim that he was sexually involved with others. He then implies that many will be jealous of her, because she, and not one of them, has an erotic relationship with him. The metaphor reveals a "gender reversal", as the male narrator stands for a city, conquered by a woman, who is represented as a soldier carrying a spear. The reason why this city metaphor is used is clear from the perspective of cognitive metaphor theory. As George Lakoff and Mark Turner have pointed out,^[32] metaphors have persuasive power over us, as we are predisposed to accept something if it is presented in a metaphoric manner. This explains why the male narrator makes use of a metaphor in his speech of persuasion to the woman.

 A subtype of metaphor concerns personification, which in turn can be subdivided into several categories.^[33] These are "pathetic fallacy", i.e. the attribution of human emotions to space, "activization", by which space is endowed with physical life and movement, and "anthropomorphization", the bodily appearance as man or woman. An example of city personification comes from a poem by Theognis, dated around 600 B.C.:^[34]

In this poem the aristocratic narrator partly blames himself and the addressee (Cyrnus) but above all the aristocratic, oligarchic narratees for the present disorder and impending rise of tyranny in the city because of their greed and injustice. The image he sketches is one of a personified city.

The beginning of the poem reveals an instance of "anthropomorphization", as the city is depicted as a pregnant woman about to give birth to a tyrant. In ancient Greek lyric such an image also appears in the Second Olympian Ode of the fifth-century poet Pindar, addressed to the tyrant of Acragas, Theron: "No city for a hundred years has given birth to a man more beneficent in his mind or generous with his hand for his friends than Theron" (lines 93-95). Theognis and Pindar make use of the same metaphor, but their different ideological stance, aristocratic and monarchic, respectively, require it to be handled differently. This observation has wider significance for our understanding of metaphors. Based on the observation that in modern politics the American nation is conceptualized by liberals as a "nurturing parent" and by conservatives as a "strict father", George Lakoff^[35] has claimed that people who adopt different ideologies also employ different metaphors. The city anthropomorphization in Theognis and Pindar nuance this claim, at least for ancient Greek metaphors.

A second instance of personification appears in the middle of the poem, when the narrator communicates that a city being worn out by its unjust leaders will not remain calm for long, even though it lies in complete calmness at present. Here we are dealing with "activization", as the narrator attributes future unrest to a city, and thus evokes an atmosphere of imminent chaos and danger.

A final instance occurs at the end of the poem, when the narrator urges his city not to delight in civil strife, kinship murder or tyranny. In this case we are dealing with the "pathetic fallacy", as the city is endowed with feelings which are normally ascribed to human beings. This has to be understood as an indirect appeal to the aristocratic narratees not to indulge in the catastrophic events.

The function of these types of city personification is, first of all, to dramatize the disastrous situation in the city. Next, it an emotional function: by anthropomorphizing the city and endowing it with emotions the narrator tries to emotionally involve the aristocratic narratees. This entails a persuasive function, which is characteristic of metaphors in general according to cognitive metaphors specialists.^[36] By emotionally engaging the aristocratic narrates, the narrator persuades them to take action, to prevent the disastrous events alluded to from unfolding.^[37]

Conclusion: The Benefits of Transferring Narratology to Ancient Greek Lyric

Combining the new tools of narratology, which were enabled by its transgeneric and diachronic paradigm shifts, with my research in the Classics and interest in the "spatial turn" in cultural and literary studies, I aimed to apply narratology to lyric poetry, by focusing on the concept of space. While narratology has confined the functions of space to that of setting the scene and characterizing the behaviour or milieu of a narrative agent, I have argued for the symbolic function of space to be taken more seriously. On the basis of analyses of ancient Greek lyric poems from the seventh through the fifth century B.C. I have built up a model for investigating the symbolism of space by distinguishing between symbolic associations and symbolic forms of space, drawing on German phenomenological studies of space and cognitive metaphor theory. Although this model needs to be further theoretically refined and is grounded only on ancient Greek lyric poetry, I hope that it may be of use for the study of space in other literary texts from other cultural-historical periods. On a more theoretical level, the fruitfulness of the transfer of narratology to ancient Greek lyric, with regard to space, may give an impetus to enrich narratological theory by applying it to other genres and other cultural-historical periods and on the basis of other narrative concepts. In this way, narratology can function as a literary theory which is both synchronically and diachronically inclusive and hermeneutically grounded.