Triangulation in Archaic Poetics: Comparison and Complication

Abstract

This article considers the form(s) in which moral advice is expressed in lyric and the context(s) in which it is performed, with an eye to addressing the complications that invariably result. Advice in archaic lyric, it argues, is crafted to defy a straightforward interpretation: whether a poet proceeds directly or indirectly, triangulation of some sort is inevitable. Moralizing strategies complicate the poet–audience binary by introducing additional, mediating material or perspectives whose relationship to the advice at stake is inherently ambiguous. Advice presented indirectly via comparanda or mythological exempla, for example, adds to the point being made, while a more direct form of address gestures toward both universal maxim and particular addressee(s). A hermeneutics of reception must therefore acknowledge the interpretive work that is left to a poem’s audience(s) and account for the poetic tendency simultaneously to compare and to complicate. The paradox is that however much these strategies project their transparency, the content (i.e., advice) is nonetheless obfuscated.