Lyric cities: poet, performance, and community

My dissertation analyzes how poets in archaic Greece interacted with their own local communities and how they positioned themselves within the community through their poetry. Archaic Greece (ca. 800-480 BC) was a time of great political and social change as interactions between the various autonomous Greek city-states intensified. Recent research has emphasized the role that poets had in negotiating local identities within this growing network of Greek states. Instead of studying how poets communicate with and praise other communities, this study will analyze how poets interact with and position themselves within their own community. As I argue in this study, a poet adapts a fundamentally different persona at home rather than abroad.