The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric Andromache Karanika L. A. Swift . The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. xii + 451 pp. Cloth, $130. L. A. Swift's The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric is a lucidly written book that traces the transformations of lyric genres as constituents of tragedy. It offers a rich account and a brief review cannot do justice to the complexity of the discussion offered. The book, divided into seven chapters, begins with a thought-provoking discussion of the nature of lyric genres and maps eloquently the entanglements of definition endemic to those genres. Swift gives a valuable commentary on select ancient writings on the classification of genres and argues against tight definitions of same. Ancient writers had access to poetry, but not to the radically defining factor of the performative (and ritual) context. She then tackles the difficult question of what "counts as a genre," illustrating a case-study based on dithyrambos. The gap in the surviving fragments and the ancient discussions of the genres justifies Swift's choice to include this genre in her book. She aptly moves her discussion from the early (possibly a "cultic" type of song) to the evolved narrative poems and then to the New Music's "dithyrambic" style and connects it with her general topic by characterizing dithyrambos in terms a tragic audience would recognize. Swift demonstrates effectively that lyric genres are bound to their socio-cultural norms; tragic lyric is then put into the context of the community that brought its form to life. This makes for a fitting transition to her discussion in the second chapter of Athenian exposure to lyric poetry as a grounds for delving into the more specific topic of tragedy's inclusion and presentation of certain lyric types. Swift reminds us that part of the broader thinking in her scholarship shows that lyric brings with it norms and cultural experiences that are deeply rooted in the context that led to lyric's very genesis. She rightly remarks, "generic interaction is not just another form of intertextuality" (35). Using evidence from comedies, she suggests that although lyric material was known in a broad spectrum of references (including parodies, jokes, etc.), it is not certain that an Athenian would be exposed to the ritual context of a lyric performance. She then addresses the difficult topic of the Athenians' intimacy with lyric which possibly circulated as "elite" material. On the relationship between the various aspects of lyric poetry and tragedy's standing [End Page 503] as a genre of its own, Swift writes with caution, citing Athenian familiarity with broad patterns of lyric genres as well as the varying degrees of the appropriation of different lyric genres as part of the Athenian literary heritage. The next five chapters are each dedicated to one genre: paian, epinikion, partheneion, hymenaios, and thrēnos. In each chapter she follows a consistent methodology, first situating each genre into its lyric context then discussing its re-positioning in tragedy. In her treatment of the paian, Swift highlights the relevance of the performance context, for example, as an expression for a community in celebratory or even apotropaic contexts. In tragedy, the paian is one of the most easily distinguishable genres, as it is often named (Aesch. Ag. 146). References to paianes can be used to produce irony, as part of an allusion, or to convey religious associations in sophisticated ways. Swift analyzes these modes in detail with reference to two tragedies. For example, in Oedipus Tyrannus paeanic touches embroider the language of the play both to reinforce conventions about Apollo and his presence as the primary god of healing and oracular language (and the paian itself), as well as to create a complex metaphor for the theme of light versus darkness in terms of knowledge and discovery. The paeanic language becomes a point of reference for the audience as it makes connections with the divine beyond the performance at hand. This point is reinforced through a reading of Euripides' Ion, which goes beyond the obvious presence of paian refrains and the connections established with Apollo...