Arum Park (U. of Arizona), "Aeschylus' Suppliants and Pindar's Epinician"

Date
Fri November 8th 2019, 12:15 - 1:30pm
Event Sponsor
Department of Classics
Location
Building 110, Room 112
Arum Park (U. of Arizona), "Aeschylus' Suppliants and Pindar's Epinician"

This talk focuses on lines 625-709 of Aeschylus’ Suppliants, where the Danaids, having just been told that the Argives will grant them refuge, raise prayers of good tidings for Argos. Their utopic vision for Argos is fairly standard fare for such prayers, but their language also resonates with themes found in Pindar’s epinician poetry, themes like the sacrosanctity of reciprocity and good governance. Furthermore, the Danaids’ prayer evokes Pindaric contexts that stress the purpose and function of poetry. I will examine these points of resonance in detail to argue that we can see in the Danaids’ words a self-consciousness of their form as poetry. Such self-consciousness fits in with a general tendency by Aeschylus and others to attribute poetic creation to female figures.

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