The aim of my dissertation is to trace an intellectual and theoretical trend in classical Greek literature and philosophy that ironizes and theorizes dramatic mimesis as transformative. The texts I will examine in my dissertation are loci classici for thinking about ancient literary criticism (e.g. Aristophanes’ Frogs) as well as mimesis (Plato’s Republic), and the originality of my project lies in bringing these texts together in order to think through a cluster of related concepts: mimesis, the body, and being and becoming. I will show show that the literary texts of Aristophanes and Euripides, in particular, shed light on dramatists’ views of mimesis, and I argue that they offer an alternative to the view of mimesis in Republic Book 10 as an image impoverished of being and knowledge. In Aristophanes and Euripides putting on a costume can change one’s bodily comportment and ultimately one’s character and behavior.

By sketching a history of mimesis that precedes the work of Plato and Aristotle, my project brings out an alternative view of mimesis. I read the language surrounding mimesis in Aristophanes, Euripides, and Plato closely in order to show how mimesis is put into conversation with important thematic binaries such as being/becoming and seeming/being. Mimesis is often depicted not merely as a disguise or copy, but as a transformational force that affecting poets, actors, and audiences. By unpacking the depth and diversity of the discourses surrounding mimesis, we can see that it is connected to other topics in the intellectual revolution of the 5th c. BCE, such as nomos and physis and the development and profusion of rhetoric. In the dissertation I use the term “mimetic metamorphosis” to convey this notion of mimesis as metamorphosis. “Mimetic metamorphosis” is a helpful term because it covers both the scenes that depict poets or characters becoming or representing different people (such as Dicaeopolis becoming Telephus in Aristophanes’ Acharnians) and the theoretical discourse surrounding these scenes. In order for authors of literary works to theorize mimesis as transformational, the scenes in which these transformations are depicted are often highly metatheatrical. This allows for commentary on the nature of mimesis. Thus, “mimetic metamorphosis” applies both to the metamorphoses that are represented through the enactment of dramatic mimesis and to the metatheatrical, often ironic, commentary surrounding mimesis as a transformative force. Characters draw attention to the costumes, gestures, and language they put on to appear like another, and the language surrounding these scenes reveals a concerted interest in recurrent themes of being and becoming, often with reference to the words εἰμί (“be”) and γίγνομαι (“become”).

Ultimately, my aim with this project and the term mimetic metamorphosis is to revise the view of mimesis as a mere imitation or copy that is inherited from Book 10 of Plato’s Republic. I trace these alternative views of mimesis in order to show that there is a rich conception of mimesis prior to Plato and that this discussion has an undercurrent in Plato’s poetics. My project offers new insights into the texts in question as well as ancient literary criticism and mimesis. By placing these texts in conversation with each other, I argue that Aristophanes, Euripides, and Plato theorize that mimetic poetry is a medium affecting authors, performers, and audiences in a similar way. By imitating a character and taking on that character’s defining traits, one differs from the person one was before. This kind of transformation and self-likening to another also allows for one to empathize with a fictional character. By reading for the literary representation and theorization of mimesis, or “mimetic metamorphosis,” I argue that classical Greek literature views poetry as an affective, transformational force that challenges being and notions of the self.

In this dissertation, I challenge the dominant narrative in Iliad scholarship that has tended either to disregard feminine voices or to dismiss their relevance to the poem’s overall evaluation of heroic society. My methodology is primarily literary-critical, but I also make use of anthropological and sociological theories of gender, such as R.W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity. I argue that feminine voices and perspectives are central to the Iliad’s moral program, and that the epic uses them to critique the destruction that the traditional masculine values of Homeric warriors cause to community and family ties. The Iliad does not valorize the strict binary between masculinity and femininity that is upheld by certain characters in the epic, but instead suggests that some “feminine” qualities are intimately linked with a warrior’s identity and role as protector. The poem constructs a femininity that both strives to preserve life and is ultimately doomed in this endeavor, but which is nevertheless portrayed as more beneficial to society than the kind of warrior masculinity that excludes all aspects of femininity from itself. I further propose that this critique of normative warrior masculinity in the Iliad aligns with a shift in gender roles and warrior identity that appears in the archaeological record of Greece in the late Early Iron Age (c. 800-700 BCE). I suggest that the Iliad’s evaluation of heroic masculinity reflects societal unease with the ways in which traditional warrior values were beginning to threaten the stability of the emerging polis by prioritizing the pursuit of kleos, “glory,” over all else.

This dissertation asks how Homer, Hesiod, and Theognis envision egalitarian alternatives to the conditions of social stratification that prevail in the fictional worlds of early Greek poetry. I track moments when characters relegated to the lower ranks of their societies—beggars, plebian rabble-rousers, and masses of common soldiers—stage challenges to the social and narrative primacy of the texts’ protagonists, who invariably belong to the aristocratic or propertied classes. Even though these challenges fail on a narrative level, their rich aesthetic content invites readers to reflect on how each text’s poetic priorities could be subverted, reinforced, or transformed in a flattened social landscape. I draw on the work of contemporary philosophers and political theorists to model how egalitarian subjectivity, ways of organizing and belonging together, can surface in diverse venues, including forms of collective militancy, ethical self-fashioning, and aesthetic expression. By locating a space of political contestation in sensory experience, this approach supplements the forms of deliberative politics that are more familiar to Classical Studies scholarship. It thereby offers a novel way of giving voice to the minor characters who pose a challenge from below to the fundamental social premises of early Greek poetry.

This dissertation is a consideration of how narratives in the Iliad and Odyssey find their shapes. Applying insights from scholars working in the fields of narratology and oral poetics, I consider moments in Homeric epic when characters make stories out of their lives and tell them to each other. My focus is on the concept of "creativity" -- the extent to which the poet and his characters create and alter the reality in which they live by controlling the shape of the reality they mould in their storytelling.

The first two chapters each examine storytelling by internal characters. In the first chapter I read Achilles' and Agamemnon's quarrel as a set of competing attempts to create the authoritative narrative of the situation the Achaeans find themselves in, and Achilles' retelling of the quarrel to Thetis as part of the move towards the acceptance of his version over that of Agamemnon or even the Homeric Narrator that occurs over the course of the epic. In the second chapter I consider the constant storytelling that occurs at the end of the Odyssey as a competition between the families of Odysseus and the suitors to control the narrative that will be created out of Odysseus's homecoming. The war that the two sides begin to fight literalizes the combativeness with which Homeric narratives are created.

The final two chapters consider the process by which the poet(s) of the Iliad and Odyssey have shaped the epics themselves. With special emphasis on the linear process through which oral poetry is created, I examine the gods for their role in managing and controlling plot. In the third chapter I consider ways in which gods represent the voice of the audience, and in which divine intervention allows the epics to be expanded and modified constantly through the process of composition in performance. In the fourth chapter, I read Zeus as a stand-in for the poet, and consider his words, actions, and Will as part of the machinery through which the poet controls the central plot of an epic poem.

Homer regularly connects the life cycle of trees with the life and death of human beings to bring vividly before his audience the strength and endurance of his characters and the fragility and transience of the human condition. My work builds on previous studies of tree imagery in Homeric similes but focuses specifically on the relationship between tree imagery in speech and narrative tree similes. I argue that Homeric characters use tree imagery in ways that mirror and manipulate common Homeric themes expressed by the narrator.

In the introductory chapter, I discuss the provenance of the metaphor linking plants and humans and discuss the poet's relationship to the narrator and characters. Each of the following chapters, then, presents the close reading of a speech that features a tree image, explicates the rhetorical impact of that image in its immediate context, and finally compares that reading with the way the narrator uses similar images. In Chapter 2, I read Achilles' oath on the scepter (Il. 1.234-9) against the tree-similes of the Iliad's battle narrative. Chapter 3 compares Glaucus' simile of the leaves (Il. 6.146-9) with the other leaf imagery in the Homeric corpus. Chapter 4 connects Odysseus' recollection of the sacred palm on Delos (Od. 6.160-9) with plant imagery in epithalamic poetry and with other mentions of shoots and saplings in Homer. Chapter 5 shows how Odysseus' description of his rooted bedpost (Od. 23.183-204) draws on the narrator's descriptions of rooted trees and of carpentry in the corpus to buttress his claims of his identity as husband of Penelope and rightful king of Ithaca.

Each chapter, therefore, reveals how the characters subtly manipulate details of their plant descriptions, how each follows or departs from norms established by the narrator, and, ultimately, how trees, leaves, shoots, and roots each carry their own distinct symbolic meanings. What results, then, is a nuanced account of tree imagery in Homer that illustrates its considerable range and shows how it is capable of representing the full scope of heroic strength and vulnerability.