Enargeia and Bodily Mimesis

This chapter analyses the ancient rhetorical concept of enargeia (‘visual vividness’) against the background of recent cognitively inflected research into embodied aspects of reading. While enargeia has usually been interpreted as involving the transference of mental images from author to reader by means of elaborate verbal descriptions (ekphrasis), this chapter shows that this approach leaves many aspects of enargeia unaccounted for—not least a notable focus on narrative descriptions of bodily movements in ancient sources that discuss the concept. The chapter argues that an enactivist account of vision and imagination and embodied theories of language comprehension help us better to understand what ancient critics mean by enargeia. In particular, they give cognitive substance to the claim made by various ancient critics that readers’ quasi-visual responses to texts entailed taking an internal view of represented scenes and could even prompt readers to imaginatively ‘project’ themselves into the bodies of described characters. Imagining bodily actions always to some extent cuts through an inner–outer dichotomy, as it achieves its power and vividness through the reader’s awareness of motor processes, both in others’ bodies and in one’s own. The chapter shows that ancient critics were drawn especially to narrative renditions of goal-directed, transitive movements of the kind which, on an enactivist account, are formative of our experience of agency, and to representations of not necessarily voluntary movements of ‘swaying’ bodies.

Introduction

This volume aims to pursue a new approach to ancient Greek narrative beyond the taxonomies of structuralist narratologies, focusing on the phenomenal and experiential dimension of our response to narrative and triangulating ancient narrative with ancient criticism and cognitive approaches. The introductory chapter offers an overview of the theoretical frameworks in play and briefly encapsulates how each chapter seeks to contribute to a multifaceted picture of narrative and aesthetic experience. Immersion and embodiment emerge as central concepts and common threads throughout, helping to establish a more comprehensive understanding of ancient narrative and ancient reading habits, as manifested in Greek criticism and rhetorical theory, though the individual chapters tackle a wide range of narrative genres, broadly understood, from epic, historiography, and the novel to tragedy and early Christian texts, and other media, such as dance and sculpture.

Narrative, Experience, and the Image

This chapter addresses the issue of narrative and experience from the perspective of ancient images, and with a focus on sculpture, a medium which does not seem particularly appropriate for pictorial narrative. As a first step, it discusses this evident lack of congruence between pictorial narrative and sculpture, and show ways in which narrative can, nevertheless, function in sculpture. For this purpose, it introduces a general distinction between two kinds of image-related ‘presence’ with reference to the case of the Knidian Aphrodite. This distinction then serves as a hermeneutical tool in the discussion of the chapter’s main categorical focus, namely the incomplete copies of sculptural groups. The analysis of this phenomenon of the Imperial Era focuses on strategies of involving the viewer in the pictorial narrative and thus reinforcing the immersive power of sculpture. Finally, it discusses the intentional creation of voids within the image, as observed in incomplete copies, in the larger context of the visual culture of the Imperial Era, notably through a parallel with the theatrical medium of pantomime.

Dancing the War Report in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes

This chapter reconsiders in its theatrical and narrative-related implications a testimony by Athenaeus (1,22 A), according to whom, at some point in Seven against Thebes, a dancer called Telestes danced the events so skilfully as to make them manifest. Departing from previous views on the subject, the chapter argues that, in Seven, the most suitable moment for Telestes’ dance to take place was not during the spoken lines of the Redepaare but during the lyric parodos, and that therefore Telestes did not perform a pantomime but in all likelihood a war dance. Accordingly, the parodos would consist of two interplaying dances. One was the solo war dance by Telestes, which made visible on stage the military manoeuvres of the Argives beyond the city walls. The other was the choral song and dance of the Theban maidens, who, while expressing the terror of the attacked, also described the siege with visual details and as a real-life experience. By assuming that the lyric parodos was accompanied by a war dance, we gain a new understanding not only of the chorus’ claims to see what is going on beyond the city walls, but also of the classical sources describing Seven as a drama which left the spectators with a craving for fighting.

Ps.-Longinus on Ecstasy

This chapter examines what the ancient treatise On the Sublime tells us about the experience of Greek narrative. The author of the treatise, who is commonly referred to as Longinus, builds on the ideas of Gorgias and Plato when he describes the experience of the sublime in terms of ecstasy or displacement (ekstasis). The concept of ecstasy has aesthetic, psychological, and linguistic dimensions. It connects three aspects of sublime narrative: the author, the audience, and the linguistic organization of the text itself. Ps.-Longinus suggests that there is a direct communication between these three corners of the triangle of (sublime) communication: the stirred mind of the author, the overwhelming experience of the listener, and the disrupted style and syntax of a sublime moment in narrative. Dislocation, displacement, and transportation are characteristic of all three levels. The chapter compares the ancient theory of sublime ecstasy with the modern theory of ‘immersion’, as formulated by Marie-Laure Ryan and Rutger Allan (in Chapter 1 of this volume). While there are striking similarities between Ps.-Longinus and Ryan, there are also notable differences. Reading Ps.-Longinus next to Ryan and comparing ‘ecstasy’ with ‘immersion’ can, therefore, sharpen our understanding of the experience of narrative.

Pathos with a Point

This chapter discusses accounts of violence in so-called tragic history and suggests that this Hellenistic subgenre may better be understood as an attempt to write experiential history. It begins with defining what characterized ‘tragic’ or ‘sensationalist’ accounts of violence and atrocities, taking Diodorus Siculus’ account of the sack of Selinus (Diod. Sic. 13.57) as its case study, comparing it with passages of Thucydides and Polybius to illustrate the differences. The second part of the chapter examines the possible purpose with such experiential representations of atrocities. It proceeds by examining Polybius’ famous criticism of Phylarchus for confusing history and tragedy (Plb. 2.56) as well as fragment 21 of Agatharchides’ On the Red Sea, which discusses the correct way to write about disasters, and finally some of Diodorus’ many remarks on the didactic purpose of historiography. It concludes that the ‘tragic’ historiographers, like Thucydides and Polybius, considered their works (moral-)didactic and believed that certain things can best be learned through an experiential representation. In the third and final part of the chapter, this ideal is compared with modern history writing and parallels are drawn both with the presentist/experientialist movement and with the call from some quarters for historians to take a moral stand on their subject matter, particularly when writing about atrocities.

Lived Aesthetics and the Inner Narrative

This chapter argues that the prolonged inner processes whereby aesthetic stimuli are reworked and incorporated within usually disjointed, often inarticulate narratives of one’s self, are key for our understanding of the nature of aesthetic experience and its relationship to lived experience at large. Such a notion of lived aesthetics, entangled in autobiographical micro-narratives and incorporated into one’s sense of selfhood, has not been a priority for modern philosophical thought, ever since the terms aesthetic and aesthetics were established in the eighteenth century. Unlike modern philosophy, which tends to isolate aesthetic experience within a very limited spatio-temporal vacuum, modern novels (such as Proust’s In Search of Lost Time) and quotidian narratives in diaries (such as that by Dorothy Wordsworth) support the model of a lived aesthetics. Furthermore, the chapter suggests that ancient texts provide particularly rich and stimulating material to illustrate the symbiotic processing of aesthetic stimuli within quotidian life and one’s inner narratives. An inclusive model of aesthetic symbiosis can indeed be traced in several fascinating instances of ancient aesthetic thought.

Asyndeton, Immersion, and Hypokrisis in Ancient Greek Rhetoric

In the ancient Greek rhetorical tradition asyndeton is often discussed in connection with vivid and emotional language. The primary effects of this figure of speech are those of multiplication and rapidity in the first place. Both effects stem from the iconic character of paratactic sequences and from the cognitive effects that the absence of connectives determines in the comprehension of such linguistic constructions. These properties of asyndeton make it a suitable ‘ingredient’ to be combined with other rhetorical devices in order to induce a variety of psychological effects in the audience or readership of a text. Asyndeton is often presented as a ‘catalyst’ that merely enhances the effects of other figures, but in some cases its very presence is recognized as central to the rhetorical characterization of a passage. The rhetorical effectiveness of asyndeton is boosted by appropriate ‘dramatic’ recitation (hypokrisis), as Aristotle and Ps.-Demetrius observe, and could be lost in plain oral delivery or solitary reading. Unsurprisingly, Greek rhetoricians preferentially draw examples of asyndeton from performing genres. In such contexts, iconic language may effectively produce an immersive experience and, as a consequence, be a powerful instrument of persuasion.

World and Words

This chapter considers the Ethiopica’s piercing reflections on narrative mimesis that can be found in the responses to embedded narrations and other passages. The Ethiopica certainly emphasize the capacity of narrative to enwrap the audience, but at the same time they do not fail to mark the limits to immersion. As parallels in ekphrastic literature and the theory of rhetoric indicate, this play with immersion and reflection bespeaks a broader sensitivity to the complex nature of aesthetic experience in the Imperial Age. Heliodorus also draws our attention to the different perspectives of readers and characters no matter how experiential the narrative is. Embedded audiences highlight the dynamics of narrative economy which privileges readers over characters. Moving from reception to the medium of narrative, one finds implicit reflections on the ontological and epistemological gap between words and the world they represent. The chapter yields the conclusion that Heliodorus artfully entwines immersion and reflection, therefore ironically providing a corrective to the post-structuralist assumptions that have guided some of the most fruitful explorations of the Ethiopica.

Attending to Tragic Messenger Speeches

The chapter draws on the psychological as well as everyday notion of ‘attention’ to analyse the experience afforded by tragic messenger speeches. What marks out this experience, it is argued, is that attention shifts dynamically between not just two levels (the world of the play and the performance qua performance) but three: the offstage world of the messenger’s narrative, the messenger and his listeners onstage, and the performance qua performance. An awareness of this dynamic, it is suggested, can be detected in the iconography of messenger scenes on fourth-century pots. Euripides’ Andromache and Medea as well as Sophocles’ Electra serve as case studies for analysing the textual means by which the dramatists prompt ever-shifting patterns of attention, stimulating immersion in the narrative as well as drawing attention to the interactions occurring onstage. The chapter ends by looking to the psychology of attention to ask whether audiences are able to attend simultaneously to different levels or whether different objects of attention are in competition.