| Scholars of early Greek narratives have recently begun to interrogate the concept of Greek "myth." My dissertation directly explores the ontological status of this modern category by examining a specific traditional story in detail. I closely chart how social and cultural aspects of Archaic and Classical Greek society are incorporated into early literary narratives of the seven against Thebes. By analyzing specific ways that the social and cultural realia of Greek life are represented in these narratives, not by identifying any particular narrative as canonical or representative of the "myth" itself, we can create a better heuristic tool for understanding how narratives were produced and perceived in Greece.; Each chapter considers a different aspect of Greek life as it is represented in the narratives describing the first Theban war up to and including Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes (most importantly in the Stesichorean Lille Papyrus fragment and Aeschylus' drama). I discuss the practice of taking lots as religious and political statements, varying conceptions of twinship, the display of shield blazons in battle and in visual representation, and the relationship of the actual topography of Thebes to its narrative topography. On a broader level, I draw these specific studies together to discuss the nature of traditional narratives in their changing social and performative contexts. These contexts are not purely literary, and my discussion thus includes evaluations of artistic and archaeological evidence, religion, and the connections between the expression of traditional material in literature, art, historiography, and mythography. While I argue that there was never a canonical version of the story of the seven, I identify traditional "identifying acts" and personages that are recurrent and discuss how they relate to the narratives that incorporate them.; The dissertation thus has two functions. I demonstrate in detail how particular traditional narratives are produced and how they are transformed through time and space. Second, and more generally, I argue that it is misguided to consider the traditional material of a Greek narrative separate from its performative and enunciative contexts---in other words, that there is no independent category of Greek "myth."... |
