I am a scholar of Greek myth. My work examines ancient – and sometimes more recent – contexts for storytelling, the power of landscapes to shape and preserve stories, the Greeks’ assessment of mythic phenomena in their own culture, and the modes of interpretation to which these gave rise.
Greek myth comes to us through many different channels. Our best source for the ways that local c... more Greek myth comes to us through many different channels. Our best source for the ways that local communities told and used these stories is a travel guide from the second century AD, the Periegesis of Pausanias. Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of ancient Greek myth as a living, local tradition. He shows us that the physical landscape was nothing without the stories of heroes and gods that made sense of it, and reveals what was at stake in claims to possess the past. He also demonstrates how myths guided curious travellers to particular places, the kinds of responses they provoked, and the ways they could be tested or disputed. The Periegesis attests to a form of cultural tourism we would still recognise: it is animated by the desire to see for oneself distant places previously only read about. It shows us how travellers might map the literary landscapes that they imagined on to the reality, and how locals might package their cities to meet the demands of travellers' expectations.
In Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth, Greta Hawes uses Pausanias's text to illuminate the spatial dynamics of myth. She reveals the significance of local stories in an Empire connected by a shared literary repertoire, and the unifying power of a tradition made up paradoxically of narratives that took diverse, conflicting forms on the ground. We learn how storytelling and the physical infrastructures of the Greek mainland were intricately interwoven such that the decline or flourishing of the latter affected the archive of myth that Pausanias transmits.
Polybius boldly declares that, ‘now that all places have become accessible by land or sea, it is ... more Polybius boldly declares that, ‘now that all places have become accessible by land or sea, it is no longer appropriate to use poets and writers of myth as witnesses of the unknown’ (4.40.2). Yet storytelling was always an inextricable part of how the Greek understood their world; myths were crucial to the conceptual resonances of places both known and unknown. In this way, mythology was never banished from the Greek map even as the world it charted took on new forms.
This volume brings together leading scholars of Greek myth, literature, history and archaeology to examine the myriad intricate ways myth interacted with the physical and conceptual landscapes of antiquity. It highlights the plurality and pervasiveness of such interactions, and the crucial role of storytelling in Greek conceptions of space.
The Greek myths are characteristically fabulous; they are full of monsters, metamorphoses, and th... more The Greek myths are characteristically fabulous; they are full of monsters, metamorphoses, and the supernatural. However, they could be told in other ways as well. This volume charts ancient dissatisfaction with the excesses of myth, and the various attempts to cut these stories down to size by explaining them as misunderstood accounts of actual events. In the hands of ancient rationalizers, the hybrid forms of the Centaurs become early horse-riders, seen from a distance; the Minotaur the result of an illicit liaison, not an inter-species love affair; and Cerberus, nothing more than a notorious snake with a lethal bite. Such approaches form an indigenous mode of ancient myth criticism, and show Greeks grappling with the value and utility of their own narrative traditions. Rationalizing interpretations offer an insight into the practical difficulties inherent in distinguishing myth from history in ancient Greece, and indeed the fragmented nature of myth itself as a conceptual entity. By focusing on six Greek authors (Palaephatus, Heraclitus, Excerpta Vaticana, Conon, Plutarch, and Pausanias) and tracing the development of rationalistic interpretation from the fourth century BC to the Second Sophistic (1st-2nd centuries AD) and beyond, Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity shows that, far from being marginalized as it has been in the past, rationalization should be understood as a fundamental component of the pluralistic and shifting network of Greek myth as it was experienced in antiquity.
This article presents a systematic examination of matrilineal succession in Greek myth. It uses M... more This article presents a systematic examination of matrilineal succession in Greek myth. It uses MANTO, a digital database of Greek myth, to identify kings who succeed their fathers-in-law, maternal grandfathers, step-fathers, or wives’ previous husbands. Analysis of the fifty-four instances identified shows that the prominence of the ‘succession via widow’ motif in archaic epic is not typical of the broader tradition. Rather, civic mythmaking more commonly relies on succession by sons-in-law and maternal grandsons to craft connections between cities and lineages, and to claim panhellenic prestige. We show that matrilineal successors are not treated as necessarily illegitimate or inferior within the overwhelmingly patrilineal conventions of Greek myth. In fact, matrilineal calculations afford certain advantages, like the ability to integrate heroes from elsewhere, or to champion local kings with divine fathers. Matrilineal succession reveals the gendered dynamics inherent to Greek myth; we argue that, although in these instances regnal power is transferred through female relatives, the heroines involved are typically treated simply as nodes for this power and their roles in these stories do not necessarily correlate to a greater visibility or autonomy.
This chapter analyzes ancient attempts to render Heracles as a historical figure ("ratio nalizati... more This chapter analyzes ancient attempts to render Heracles as a historical figure ("ratio nalization") and to find in his stories philosophical principles ("allegorization"). It argues that rationalistic and allegorical interpretations cannot be as clearly delineated from one another in practice as they frequently are in theory, and that neither was hermetically re moved from the "conventional" tradition of ancient storytelling. All three betray the inter action between fragmentation of episodes and a cohesive portrait of the figure. The wellworn habits of narrating Heracles as a far-traveling, long-toiling individual noted for his out-sized personality and for defeating a range of monsters reappear: in the hands of the rationalizers he imposes order on a primitive world, fighting opponents who are fabulous only in reputation; allegorists make these opponents figures of moral distractions which must be conquered in the soul.
This article introduces a new analytical framework, ‘mythographic topography’. This approach reco... more This article introduces a new analytical framework, ‘mythographic topography’. This approach recognizes the materiality of mythographic writing as preserved by the manuscript tradition and the significance of the spatial dynamics it produces. Mythographic topography encompasses both the formal properties of textual organization, and how these shape the reader’s imaginative experience of space and narrative. As an analytical framework, it involves interrogating a text according to three categories (each an ancient meaning of topos): its arrangement of textual passages, its use of space and its activation of narrative tropes. Using the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis as a case-study, we demonstrate how this text requires the reader to consider issues of order, dis-order and re-ordering within a culturally-familiar narrative paradigm
La mitología griega en la tradición literaria: de la Antigüedad a la Grecia contemporánea, 2017
Comparison of ancient accounts of the myth of Actaeon shows that, while the nature of his offense... more Comparison of ancient accounts of the myth of Actaeon shows that, while the nature of his offense differs markedly between sources, the form of his death is stable throughout antiquity. This chapter uses observations from Nick Lowe and Ada Neschke-Hentschke about the paradigmatic functioning of myths to consider how the inevitability of Actaeon’s end could be harnessed to lend specific narrative colouring to retellings. It uses Ovid’s account of Actaeon in the Metamorphoses to examine the broader ancient tradition, arguing that the identification of Actaeon by name functioned in a meta-poetic manner to hasten his death, and that the inevitability of this death brought with it implicit consideration of the workings of justice in the mythic story-world.
* This article is part of the Research Project 'Estudios sobre transmisión y recepción de Paléfat... more * This article is part of the Research Project 'Estudios sobre transmisión y recepción de Paléfato y la exégesis racionalista de los mitos / Studies on the transmission and reception of Palaephatus, and the rationalist exegesis of myths' (FFI2014-52203-P), supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) of Spain. The sections on ancient texts (2, 3, and 4) are primarily the work of Julian Barr and Greta Hawes. The sections on Byzantine texts (5, 6, and 7) are primarily the work of Minerva Alganza Roldán, and were translated into English by Greta Hawes.
For a digital offprint of this paper, please contact me by email (greta.hawes@anu.edu.au).
Abstr... more For a digital offprint of this paper, please contact me by email (greta.hawes@anu.edu.au).
Abstract: Anne Salmond has described Maguire’s work as giving visual expression to the pae, a liminal place of exchange and discussion in Māori culture. In A Taranaki Dialogue (2011), the currency of this exchange is overtly Socratic dialogue; the discussions of the agora and the symposium have been transplanted to the South Pacific. This chapter examines the ways in which dialectic wisdom plays out in this series of etchings, and the ways in which a viewer, compelled by Socrates’ questions to actively participate in the work, to engage her faculties of reason and imagination, animates these strangely inert landscapes.
A Taranaki Dialogue is Maguire’s darkest and least accessible work to date. Not only is the visual palate somber – the brooding Taranaki looks out over isolated figures – but the register includes none of the easy, whimsical humour which proved such a captivating facet of her work elsewhere. The entry point for the viewer remains, however, the distinctive triangulation of South Pacific, European, and ancient Greek elements. Where the colonized landscape of Taranaki dominates visually, the captions (‘Socrates asks “what is…”’) draw all of this into the ancient practice of dialectic philosophy.
As in the Platonic texts, Socrates’ questions provide a starting point for discussion. But whereas Plato then goes on to weave a series of answers and responses, it is up to the viewer of Maguire’s work to decide how this dialogue will progress. The visual juxtaposition of images, perspectives and ideas in Maguire’s etchings suggests something of the interactive nature of dialogue – the back and forth hammering of discussion, dispute, assertion, reflection and revision – but leaves its exact dynamics unmapped. The etchings are a kind of setting for staging a dialogue; they are a series of prompts which suggest any number of different trains of thought. This chapter will set out some possible responses to this work, concentrating on three images, What is Victory?, What is History? and What is Myth? It will move between potential responses to the questions these images provoke from the context of antiquity, and from that of contemporary New Zealand.
V. Zajko & H. Hoyle (edd.) Blackwell handbook to the reception of classical mythology. Wiley-Blackwell. , 2017
Allegoresis is a style of interpretation which deliberately eschews the literal meaning of a text... more Allegoresis is a style of interpretation which deliberately eschews the literal meaning of a text in favour of hidden, symbolic ones which confirm the reader’s own doctrine. This mode of reading existed in an unbroken tradition through antiquity and the Middle Ages. It allowed new generations of reader to preserve the status of culturally important myths in the face of radically changed philosophical and religious contexts. In doing so, it fundamentally changed the ways in which these stories were understood, providing a rich and extreme example of the imposition of ideology onto storytelling.
This essay examines the influence of allegoresis on the Greek mythic tradition in antiquity and the Middle Ages. It uses allegorical interpretations attached to the stories of Circe to illustrate more general themes regarding the process of allegorical reading as a mode of reception. It argues that the tradition of recounting Greek myths is inseparable from the interpretative and didactic traditions through which these stories were transmitted. Allegorical interpretations are not arbitrary impositions, but draw on existing modes of understanding myths and prompt, in turn, new habits of thinking about them. This radically revisionist method of conserving myths thus also plays a role in establishing the meanings felt to be “natural” to these stories. Likewise, the habitual nature of allegorical interpretation, which displays interest in parts of the mythic tradition to the exclusion of others, impacts habits of storytelling. Its proposals regarding the symbolic meaning of the Greek mythic tradition bring to prominence particular exemplary episodes and establish a new system of conceptual connections and oppositions between mythical characters.
Allegoresis is intimately connected with other elements of the mythic tradition. It was utilised as a form of literary criticism, offering commentary on the epic tradition in antiquity and on Ovid’s Metamorphoses from the twelfth century. Allegorical interpretations were also incorporated into several late antique and early medieval handbooks which transmitted stories in a mythographic format. The study of allegoresis, then, illustrates the ways in which interpretation creates an object of study through shifting interpretative habits: within the allegorical tradition, myths are, at different times, poetic artefacts indistinguishable from their most prominent literary expressions, and a canon of independent narratives.
This chapter uses Pausanias’ account of Thebes to offer a new model of ‘reperformance’ as a model... more This chapter uses Pausanias’ account of Thebes to offer a new model of ‘reperformance’ as a model for understanding the desire to ‘touch’ the past, and for understanding the relationship between travel and travel text. It draws in particular on analogies from recent studies of historical re-enactment. It argues for the necessity of recognising the potential sensory and experiential dynamics which animate Pausanias’ text. Thebes emerges as an ideal case study for this model of reperformance given its distinctive prominence in tragedy and on account of the way its topographical landmarks circulated as mimetic doubles, and came to influence the shape of the city itself. Through readings of three Theban landmarks – the walls, the tomb of Menoeceus, and the House of Cadmus – this chapter argues that encounters with Thebes in any present cannot escape the power of its recurrent, mimetic past.
Could we imagine a new set of adventures for that old adventurer, Herakles? What would he have go... more Could we imagine a new set of adventures for that old adventurer, Herakles? What would he have gotten up to, for example, in colonial New Zealand? In Herakles writes home, a striking lithograph from Marian Maguire’s The Labours of Herakles, the black-figure hero scribbles away inside his wooden homestead. The distinctive, conical peak of Taranaki seen through a window locates the scene on the western cape of New Zealand’s North Island. Above his head, Māori carvings – pressed into new service as bookends – guard a small library which takes in Homer, the Bible, and accounts of life in the South Pacific. A Greek-Māori dictionary hints at the practicalities, and problems, of cross-cultural translation; the ongoing effort of understanding, and the constant battle to be understood. Frederick Maning’s Old New Zealand would offer mediated insights of another kind. Written by one of the most famous Pākehā Māori, it is an account of Māori culture written for a European audience by a man at home in both worlds.
Greek myth comes to us through many different channels. Our best source for the ways that local c... more Greek myth comes to us through many different channels. Our best source for the ways that local communities told and used these stories is a travel guide from the second century AD, the Periegesis of Pausanias. Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of ancient Greek myth as a living, local tradition. He shows us that the physical landscape was nothing without the stories of heroes and gods that made sense of it, and reveals what was at stake in claims to possess the past. He also demonstrates how myths guided curious travellers to particular places, the kinds of responses they provoked, and the ways they could be tested or disputed. The Periegesis attests to a form of cultural tourism we would still recognise: it is animated by the desire to see for oneself distant places previously only read about. It shows us how travellers might map the literary landscapes that they imagined on to the reality, and how locals might package their cities to meet the demands of travellers' expectations.
In Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth, Greta Hawes uses Pausanias's text to illuminate the spatial dynamics of myth. She reveals the significance of local stories in an Empire connected by a shared literary repertoire, and the unifying power of a tradition made up paradoxically of narratives that took diverse, conflicting forms on the ground. We learn how storytelling and the physical infrastructures of the Greek mainland were intricately interwoven such that the decline or flourishing of the latter affected the archive of myth that Pausanias transmits.
Polybius boldly declares that, ‘now that all places have become accessible by land or sea, it is ... more Polybius boldly declares that, ‘now that all places have become accessible by land or sea, it is no longer appropriate to use poets and writers of myth as witnesses of the unknown’ (4.40.2). Yet storytelling was always an inextricable part of how the Greek understood their world; myths were crucial to the conceptual resonances of places both known and unknown. In this way, mythology was never banished from the Greek map even as the world it charted took on new forms.
This volume brings together leading scholars of Greek myth, literature, history and archaeology to examine the myriad intricate ways myth interacted with the physical and conceptual landscapes of antiquity. It highlights the plurality and pervasiveness of such interactions, and the crucial role of storytelling in Greek conceptions of space.
The Greek myths are characteristically fabulous; they are full of monsters, metamorphoses, and th... more The Greek myths are characteristically fabulous; they are full of monsters, metamorphoses, and the supernatural. However, they could be told in other ways as well. This volume charts ancient dissatisfaction with the excesses of myth, and the various attempts to cut these stories down to size by explaining them as misunderstood accounts of actual events. In the hands of ancient rationalizers, the hybrid forms of the Centaurs become early horse-riders, seen from a distance; the Minotaur the result of an illicit liaison, not an inter-species love affair; and Cerberus, nothing more than a notorious snake with a lethal bite. Such approaches form an indigenous mode of ancient myth criticism, and show Greeks grappling with the value and utility of their own narrative traditions. Rationalizing interpretations offer an insight into the practical difficulties inherent in distinguishing myth from history in ancient Greece, and indeed the fragmented nature of myth itself as a conceptual entity. By focusing on six Greek authors (Palaephatus, Heraclitus, Excerpta Vaticana, Conon, Plutarch, and Pausanias) and tracing the development of rationalistic interpretation from the fourth century BC to the Second Sophistic (1st-2nd centuries AD) and beyond, Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity shows that, far from being marginalized as it has been in the past, rationalization should be understood as a fundamental component of the pluralistic and shifting network of Greek myth as it was experienced in antiquity.
This article presents a systematic examination of matrilineal succession in Greek myth. It uses M... more This article presents a systematic examination of matrilineal succession in Greek myth. It uses MANTO, a digital database of Greek myth, to identify kings who succeed their fathers-in-law, maternal grandfathers, step-fathers, or wives’ previous husbands. Analysis of the fifty-four instances identified shows that the prominence of the ‘succession via widow’ motif in archaic epic is not typical of the broader tradition. Rather, civic mythmaking more commonly relies on succession by sons-in-law and maternal grandsons to craft connections between cities and lineages, and to claim panhellenic prestige. We show that matrilineal successors are not treated as necessarily illegitimate or inferior within the overwhelmingly patrilineal conventions of Greek myth. In fact, matrilineal calculations afford certain advantages, like the ability to integrate heroes from elsewhere, or to champion local kings with divine fathers. Matrilineal succession reveals the gendered dynamics inherent to Greek myth; we argue that, although in these instances regnal power is transferred through female relatives, the heroines involved are typically treated simply as nodes for this power and their roles in these stories do not necessarily correlate to a greater visibility or autonomy.
This chapter analyzes ancient attempts to render Heracles as a historical figure ("ratio nalizati... more This chapter analyzes ancient attempts to render Heracles as a historical figure ("ratio nalization") and to find in his stories philosophical principles ("allegorization"). It argues that rationalistic and allegorical interpretations cannot be as clearly delineated from one another in practice as they frequently are in theory, and that neither was hermetically re moved from the "conventional" tradition of ancient storytelling. All three betray the inter action between fragmentation of episodes and a cohesive portrait of the figure. The wellworn habits of narrating Heracles as a far-traveling, long-toiling individual noted for his out-sized personality and for defeating a range of monsters reappear: in the hands of the rationalizers he imposes order on a primitive world, fighting opponents who are fabulous only in reputation; allegorists make these opponents figures of moral distractions which must be conquered in the soul.
This article introduces a new analytical framework, ‘mythographic topography’. This approach reco... more This article introduces a new analytical framework, ‘mythographic topography’. This approach recognizes the materiality of mythographic writing as preserved by the manuscript tradition and the significance of the spatial dynamics it produces. Mythographic topography encompasses both the formal properties of textual organization, and how these shape the reader’s imaginative experience of space and narrative. As an analytical framework, it involves interrogating a text according to three categories (each an ancient meaning of topos): its arrangement of textual passages, its use of space and its activation of narrative tropes. Using the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis as a case-study, we demonstrate how this text requires the reader to consider issues of order, dis-order and re-ordering within a culturally-familiar narrative paradigm
La mitología griega en la tradición literaria: de la Antigüedad a la Grecia contemporánea, 2017
Comparison of ancient accounts of the myth of Actaeon shows that, while the nature of his offense... more Comparison of ancient accounts of the myth of Actaeon shows that, while the nature of his offense differs markedly between sources, the form of his death is stable throughout antiquity. This chapter uses observations from Nick Lowe and Ada Neschke-Hentschke about the paradigmatic functioning of myths to consider how the inevitability of Actaeon’s end could be harnessed to lend specific narrative colouring to retellings. It uses Ovid’s account of Actaeon in the Metamorphoses to examine the broader ancient tradition, arguing that the identification of Actaeon by name functioned in a meta-poetic manner to hasten his death, and that the inevitability of this death brought with it implicit consideration of the workings of justice in the mythic story-world.
* This article is part of the Research Project 'Estudios sobre transmisión y recepción de Paléfat... more * This article is part of the Research Project 'Estudios sobre transmisión y recepción de Paléfato y la exégesis racionalista de los mitos / Studies on the transmission and reception of Palaephatus, and the rationalist exegesis of myths' (FFI2014-52203-P), supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) of Spain. The sections on ancient texts (2, 3, and 4) are primarily the work of Julian Barr and Greta Hawes. The sections on Byzantine texts (5, 6, and 7) are primarily the work of Minerva Alganza Roldán, and were translated into English by Greta Hawes.
For a digital offprint of this paper, please contact me by email (greta.hawes@anu.edu.au).
Abstr... more For a digital offprint of this paper, please contact me by email (greta.hawes@anu.edu.au).
Abstract: Anne Salmond has described Maguire’s work as giving visual expression to the pae, a liminal place of exchange and discussion in Māori culture. In A Taranaki Dialogue (2011), the currency of this exchange is overtly Socratic dialogue; the discussions of the agora and the symposium have been transplanted to the South Pacific. This chapter examines the ways in which dialectic wisdom plays out in this series of etchings, and the ways in which a viewer, compelled by Socrates’ questions to actively participate in the work, to engage her faculties of reason and imagination, animates these strangely inert landscapes.
A Taranaki Dialogue is Maguire’s darkest and least accessible work to date. Not only is the visual palate somber – the brooding Taranaki looks out over isolated figures – but the register includes none of the easy, whimsical humour which proved such a captivating facet of her work elsewhere. The entry point for the viewer remains, however, the distinctive triangulation of South Pacific, European, and ancient Greek elements. Where the colonized landscape of Taranaki dominates visually, the captions (‘Socrates asks “what is…”’) draw all of this into the ancient practice of dialectic philosophy.
As in the Platonic texts, Socrates’ questions provide a starting point for discussion. But whereas Plato then goes on to weave a series of answers and responses, it is up to the viewer of Maguire’s work to decide how this dialogue will progress. The visual juxtaposition of images, perspectives and ideas in Maguire’s etchings suggests something of the interactive nature of dialogue – the back and forth hammering of discussion, dispute, assertion, reflection and revision – but leaves its exact dynamics unmapped. The etchings are a kind of setting for staging a dialogue; they are a series of prompts which suggest any number of different trains of thought. This chapter will set out some possible responses to this work, concentrating on three images, What is Victory?, What is History? and What is Myth? It will move between potential responses to the questions these images provoke from the context of antiquity, and from that of contemporary New Zealand.
V. Zajko & H. Hoyle (edd.) Blackwell handbook to the reception of classical mythology. Wiley-Blackwell. , 2017
Allegoresis is a style of interpretation which deliberately eschews the literal meaning of a text... more Allegoresis is a style of interpretation which deliberately eschews the literal meaning of a text in favour of hidden, symbolic ones which confirm the reader’s own doctrine. This mode of reading existed in an unbroken tradition through antiquity and the Middle Ages. It allowed new generations of reader to preserve the status of culturally important myths in the face of radically changed philosophical and religious contexts. In doing so, it fundamentally changed the ways in which these stories were understood, providing a rich and extreme example of the imposition of ideology onto storytelling.
This essay examines the influence of allegoresis on the Greek mythic tradition in antiquity and the Middle Ages. It uses allegorical interpretations attached to the stories of Circe to illustrate more general themes regarding the process of allegorical reading as a mode of reception. It argues that the tradition of recounting Greek myths is inseparable from the interpretative and didactic traditions through which these stories were transmitted. Allegorical interpretations are not arbitrary impositions, but draw on existing modes of understanding myths and prompt, in turn, new habits of thinking about them. This radically revisionist method of conserving myths thus also plays a role in establishing the meanings felt to be “natural” to these stories. Likewise, the habitual nature of allegorical interpretation, which displays interest in parts of the mythic tradition to the exclusion of others, impacts habits of storytelling. Its proposals regarding the symbolic meaning of the Greek mythic tradition bring to prominence particular exemplary episodes and establish a new system of conceptual connections and oppositions between mythical characters.
Allegoresis is intimately connected with other elements of the mythic tradition. It was utilised as a form of literary criticism, offering commentary on the epic tradition in antiquity and on Ovid’s Metamorphoses from the twelfth century. Allegorical interpretations were also incorporated into several late antique and early medieval handbooks which transmitted stories in a mythographic format. The study of allegoresis, then, illustrates the ways in which interpretation creates an object of study through shifting interpretative habits: within the allegorical tradition, myths are, at different times, poetic artefacts indistinguishable from their most prominent literary expressions, and a canon of independent narratives.
This chapter uses Pausanias’ account of Thebes to offer a new model of ‘reperformance’ as a model... more This chapter uses Pausanias’ account of Thebes to offer a new model of ‘reperformance’ as a model for understanding the desire to ‘touch’ the past, and for understanding the relationship between travel and travel text. It draws in particular on analogies from recent studies of historical re-enactment. It argues for the necessity of recognising the potential sensory and experiential dynamics which animate Pausanias’ text. Thebes emerges as an ideal case study for this model of reperformance given its distinctive prominence in tragedy and on account of the way its topographical landmarks circulated as mimetic doubles, and came to influence the shape of the city itself. Through readings of three Theban landmarks – the walls, the tomb of Menoeceus, and the House of Cadmus – this chapter argues that encounters with Thebes in any present cannot escape the power of its recurrent, mimetic past.
Could we imagine a new set of adventures for that old adventurer, Herakles? What would he have go... more Could we imagine a new set of adventures for that old adventurer, Herakles? What would he have gotten up to, for example, in colonial New Zealand? In Herakles writes home, a striking lithograph from Marian Maguire’s The Labours of Herakles, the black-figure hero scribbles away inside his wooden homestead. The distinctive, conical peak of Taranaki seen through a window locates the scene on the western cape of New Zealand’s North Island. Above his head, Māori carvings – pressed into new service as bookends – guard a small library which takes in Homer, the Bible, and accounts of life in the South Pacific. A Greek-Māori dictionary hints at the practicalities, and problems, of cross-cultural translation; the ongoing effort of understanding, and the constant battle to be understood. Frederick Maning’s Old New Zealand would offer mediated insights of another kind. Written by one of the most famous Pākehā Māori, it is an account of Māori culture written for a European audience by a man at home in both worlds.
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Books by Greta Hawes
In Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth, Greta Hawes uses Pausanias's text to illuminate the spatial dynamics of myth. She reveals the significance of local stories in an Empire connected by a shared literary repertoire, and the unifying power of a tradition made up paradoxically of narratives that took diverse, conflicting forms on the ground. We learn how storytelling and the physical infrastructures of the Greek mainland were intricately interwoven such that the decline or flourishing of the latter affected the archive of myth that Pausanias transmits.
This volume brings together leading scholars of Greek myth, literature, history and archaeology to examine the myriad intricate ways myth interacted with the physical and conceptual landscapes of antiquity. It highlights the plurality and pervasiveness of such interactions, and the crucial role of storytelling in Greek conceptions of space.
Papers by Greta Hawes
Abstract:
Anne Salmond has described Maguire’s work as giving visual expression to the pae, a liminal place of exchange and discussion in Māori culture. In A Taranaki Dialogue (2011), the currency of this exchange is overtly Socratic dialogue; the discussions of the agora and the symposium have been transplanted to the South Pacific. This chapter examines the ways in which dialectic wisdom plays out in this series of etchings, and the ways in which a viewer, compelled by Socrates’ questions to actively participate in the work, to engage her faculties of reason and imagination, animates these strangely inert landscapes.
A Taranaki Dialogue is Maguire’s darkest and least accessible work to date. Not only is the visual palate somber – the brooding Taranaki looks out over isolated figures – but the register includes none of the easy, whimsical humour which proved such a captivating facet of her work elsewhere. The entry point for the viewer remains, however, the distinctive triangulation of South Pacific, European, and ancient Greek elements. Where the colonized landscape of Taranaki dominates visually, the captions (‘Socrates asks “what is…”’) draw all of this into the ancient practice of dialectic philosophy.
As in the Platonic texts, Socrates’ questions provide a starting point for discussion. But whereas Plato then goes on to weave a series of answers and responses, it is up to the viewer of Maguire’s work to decide how this dialogue will progress. The visual juxtaposition of images, perspectives and ideas in Maguire’s etchings suggests something of the interactive nature of dialogue – the back and forth hammering of discussion, dispute, assertion, reflection and revision – but leaves its exact dynamics unmapped. The etchings are a kind of setting for staging a dialogue; they are a series of prompts which suggest any number of different trains of thought. This chapter will set out some possible responses to this work, concentrating on three images, What is Victory?, What is History? and What is Myth? It will move between potential responses to the questions these images provoke from the context of antiquity, and from that of contemporary New Zealand.
This essay examines the influence of allegoresis on the Greek mythic tradition in antiquity and the Middle Ages. It uses allegorical interpretations attached to the stories of Circe to illustrate more general themes regarding the process of allegorical reading as a mode of reception. It argues that the tradition of recounting Greek myths is inseparable from the interpretative and didactic traditions through which these stories were transmitted. Allegorical interpretations are not arbitrary impositions, but draw on existing modes of understanding myths and prompt, in turn, new habits of thinking about them. This radically revisionist method of conserving myths thus also plays a role in establishing the meanings felt to be “natural” to these stories. Likewise, the habitual nature of allegorical interpretation, which displays interest in parts of the mythic tradition to the exclusion of others, impacts habits of storytelling. Its proposals regarding the symbolic meaning of the Greek mythic tradition bring to prominence particular exemplary episodes and establish a new system of conceptual connections and oppositions between mythical characters.
Allegoresis is intimately connected with other elements of the mythic tradition. It was utilised as a form of literary criticism, offering commentary on the epic tradition in antiquity and on Ovid’s Metamorphoses from the twelfth century. Allegorical interpretations were also incorporated into several late antique and early medieval handbooks which transmitted stories in a mythographic format. The study of allegoresis, then, illustrates the ways in which interpretation creates an object of study through shifting interpretative habits: within the allegorical tradition, myths are, at different times, poetic artefacts indistinguishable from their most prominent literary expressions, and a canon of independent narratives.
In Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth, Greta Hawes uses Pausanias's text to illuminate the spatial dynamics of myth. She reveals the significance of local stories in an Empire connected by a shared literary repertoire, and the unifying power of a tradition made up paradoxically of narratives that took diverse, conflicting forms on the ground. We learn how storytelling and the physical infrastructures of the Greek mainland were intricately interwoven such that the decline or flourishing of the latter affected the archive of myth that Pausanias transmits.
This volume brings together leading scholars of Greek myth, literature, history and archaeology to examine the myriad intricate ways myth interacted with the physical and conceptual landscapes of antiquity. It highlights the plurality and pervasiveness of such interactions, and the crucial role of storytelling in Greek conceptions of space.
Abstract:
Anne Salmond has described Maguire’s work as giving visual expression to the pae, a liminal place of exchange and discussion in Māori culture. In A Taranaki Dialogue (2011), the currency of this exchange is overtly Socratic dialogue; the discussions of the agora and the symposium have been transplanted to the South Pacific. This chapter examines the ways in which dialectic wisdom plays out in this series of etchings, and the ways in which a viewer, compelled by Socrates’ questions to actively participate in the work, to engage her faculties of reason and imagination, animates these strangely inert landscapes.
A Taranaki Dialogue is Maguire’s darkest and least accessible work to date. Not only is the visual palate somber – the brooding Taranaki looks out over isolated figures – but the register includes none of the easy, whimsical humour which proved such a captivating facet of her work elsewhere. The entry point for the viewer remains, however, the distinctive triangulation of South Pacific, European, and ancient Greek elements. Where the colonized landscape of Taranaki dominates visually, the captions (‘Socrates asks “what is…”’) draw all of this into the ancient practice of dialectic philosophy.
As in the Platonic texts, Socrates’ questions provide a starting point for discussion. But whereas Plato then goes on to weave a series of answers and responses, it is up to the viewer of Maguire’s work to decide how this dialogue will progress. The visual juxtaposition of images, perspectives and ideas in Maguire’s etchings suggests something of the interactive nature of dialogue – the back and forth hammering of discussion, dispute, assertion, reflection and revision – but leaves its exact dynamics unmapped. The etchings are a kind of setting for staging a dialogue; they are a series of prompts which suggest any number of different trains of thought. This chapter will set out some possible responses to this work, concentrating on three images, What is Victory?, What is History? and What is Myth? It will move between potential responses to the questions these images provoke from the context of antiquity, and from that of contemporary New Zealand.
This essay examines the influence of allegoresis on the Greek mythic tradition in antiquity and the Middle Ages. It uses allegorical interpretations attached to the stories of Circe to illustrate more general themes regarding the process of allegorical reading as a mode of reception. It argues that the tradition of recounting Greek myths is inseparable from the interpretative and didactic traditions through which these stories were transmitted. Allegorical interpretations are not arbitrary impositions, but draw on existing modes of understanding myths and prompt, in turn, new habits of thinking about them. This radically revisionist method of conserving myths thus also plays a role in establishing the meanings felt to be “natural” to these stories. Likewise, the habitual nature of allegorical interpretation, which displays interest in parts of the mythic tradition to the exclusion of others, impacts habits of storytelling. Its proposals regarding the symbolic meaning of the Greek mythic tradition bring to prominence particular exemplary episodes and establish a new system of conceptual connections and oppositions between mythical characters.
Allegoresis is intimately connected with other elements of the mythic tradition. It was utilised as a form of literary criticism, offering commentary on the epic tradition in antiquity and on Ovid’s Metamorphoses from the twelfth century. Allegorical interpretations were also incorporated into several late antique and early medieval handbooks which transmitted stories in a mythographic format. The study of allegoresis, then, illustrates the ways in which interpretation creates an object of study through shifting interpretative habits: within the allegorical tradition, myths are, at different times, poetic artefacts indistinguishable from their most prominent literary expressions, and a canon of independent narratives.