In A. Georgiadou and K. Oikonomopoulou (edd.), Space, time and language in Plutarch, 55-66. De Gruyter: Berlin., 2017
This chapter examines two characteristic uses of the imperfective aspect in Plutarchan narrative,... more This chapter examines two characteristic uses of the imperfective aspect in Plutarchan narrative, and demonstrates how aspectual choices affect narrative perspective and speed.
The first is the ‘backgrounding’ use of the imperfective. It is com- mon in the Lives for the broader historical context to be related in the imperfective, that is, through verbs in the present or imperfect tenses, primarily the imperfect in- dicative and present participle. As a result, events in which the subject of the Lives was not involved are presented not as a narrated sequence but as a backdrop against which the subject’s actions, narrated in the aorist, stand out. Such a use corresponds with a quickening of narrative time.
The second characteristic use of the imperfective is to create vivid, slow-motion tableaux, in which events are narrated as though from the perspective of a participant; that is, in such cases, narrative perspective changes from an ‘external’ to an ‘internal’ one.
Analysis of a passage from the Were the Athenians more glorious in war or wisdom? (346F – 347C) shows that Plutarch himself connected the second technique with vivid, pictorial writing and was aware that it was associated with both an internal perspective and a slowing of narrative time.
Fuller discussion of this topic can be found in Duff, T. E. (2015), ‘Aspect and subordination in Plutarchan narrative’. In R. Ash, J. Mossman and F. B. Titchener (edd.), Fame and infamy: essays for Christopher Pelling on characterization in Greek and Roman biography and history, 129-148. OUP: Oxford.
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Books by Timothy E Duff
‘Generic enrichment’, a term coined by Stephen Harrison with reference to Latin poetry, is used here to refer to the different ways in which a text of one genre might incorporate or evoke features of other genres. The fact that particular Plutarchan biographies may contain not only allusions to specific texts from a variety of genres, but also features such as vocabulary, phraseology, and plot-forms which evoke other genres, has been noticed sporadically by scholars. However, this is the first volume to discuss this feature as a distinct phenomenon across the corpus of Parallel Lives and to attempt an assessment of its effect. Chapters cover the interaction of Plutarchan biography with a series of genres, including archaic poetry, comedy, tragedy, historiography, philosophy, geographical and scientific texts, oratory, inscriptions, novelistic writing and periegetical works. Together these studies demonstrate the generic complexity and richness of Plutarch’s Lives, enhance our understanding of ancient biography in general and Plutarchan biography in particular, and explore the range of effects such generic enrichment might have on readers.
Generic Enrichment in Plutarch’s Lives is of interest to students and scholars of Plutarch and ancient biography, as well as to those working in other periods and genres of both Latin and Greek literature, and to those beyond the field of Classical Studies who are interested in questions of genre and literary theory.
Papers by Timothy E Duff
Published in T. E. Duff and C. S. Chrysanthous 2025 (edd.), Generic Enrichment in Plutarch's Lives (Routledge), 1-28
This paper examines how Plutarch constructs the relationship between Alcibiades and the city of Athens in the early part of the Life of Alcibiades (chs. 4-8). It argues that, through these apparently disconnected stories, Plutarch combines the portraits of Alcibiades in Thucydides, Plato and Aristophanes with material from the orators and the anecdotal tradition not only to bring out Alcibiades’ domineering behaviour (hybris) and luxurious self-indulgence (tryphe) but also, through a series of shifting focalisations and voices, to characterize the Athenians and the dynamics of their interaction with Alcibiades. Furthermore, even though these anecdotes concern Alcibiades’ ‘personal’ life, they have explanatory force on the political level: that is, they explore and explain the mechanisms by which Alcibiades became so politically dominant, and would later be rejected so decisively. This is a portrait, in other words, not only of the great individual but also of the city which produced him.
Plato’s Charmides is notable as being the only Platonic text in which Socrates admits to feeling sexual desire for a young man. This paper examines three different receptions of this text: Oscar Wilde’s 666-line poem 'Charmides', C. P. Cavafy’s 8-line poem 'In a town of Osroene' (Ἐν πόλει τῆς Ὀσροηνῆς), and Plutarch’s much earlier 'Life of Alcibiades'. It focus on how the three authors respond to the erotic and philosophical element in the Charmides. It argues that:
Wilde’s 1881 'Charmides' provides an example of minimal textual engagement: the name Charmides is invoked solely for its connotations of young, male beauty; the tone is erotically charged but the homoerotic content is muted, and the philosophical element entirely absent.
In Cavafy’s 'In a town of Osroene', first printed in 1917, explicit allusion to ‘the Platonic Charmides’ in the last line recasts the poem an expression of homoerotic desire, and endows its group of young men with the prestige of a Platonic gathering and Platonic love.
In contrast, Plutarch’s engagement with the 'Charmides' in his 'Life of Alcibiades' is implicit, and depends entirely on the reader’s ability to recognise a series of detailed verbal echoes. Furthermore, while calling to mind the educational conversation with which Socrates engaged Charmides, Plutarch denies that Socrates’ motivation was sexual, and integrates allusion to the Charmides into a broader network of allusions to other passages in which Plato describes Socrates’ encounters with beautiful young men, or the ideal relationship of a mature man with a younger beloved, in which the sexual element is entirely absent. In so doing, Plutarch “corrects” Plato with Plato, and removes what had become an embarrassment in his period.
The first is the ‘backgrounding’ use of the imperfective. It is com- mon in the Lives for the broader historical context to be related in the imperfective, that is, through verbs in the present or imperfect tenses, primarily the imperfect in- dicative and present participle. As a result, events in which the subject of the Lives was not involved are presented not as a narrated sequence but as a backdrop against which the subject’s actions, narrated in the aorist, stand out. Such a use corresponds with a quickening of narrative time.
The second characteristic use of the imperfective is to create vivid, slow-motion tableaux, in which events are narrated as though from the perspective of a participant; that is, in such cases, narrative perspective changes from an ‘external’ to an ‘internal’ one.
Analysis of a passage from the Were the Athenians more glorious in war or wisdom? (346F – 347C) shows that Plutarch himself connected the second technique with vivid, pictorial writing and was aware that it was associated with both an internal perspective and a slowing of narrative time.
Fuller discussion of this topic can be found in Duff, T. E. (2015), ‘Aspect and subordination in Plutarchan narrative’. In R. Ash, J. Mossman and F. B. Titchener (edd.), Fame and infamy: essays for Christopher Pelling on characterization in Greek and Roman biography and history, 129-148. OUP: Oxford.
© Copyright Timothy Duff 2011. All rights reserved.
© Timothy E Duff. All rights reserved.""
However, the application of any moral lessons is left to the reader's own judgement. Furthermore, Plutarch's use of multiple focalisations means that the reader is sometimes presented with varying ways of looking at the same individual or the same historical situation. In addition, many incidents or anecdotes are marked by 'multivalence': that is, they resist reduction to a single moral message or lesson. In such cases, the reader is encouraged to exercise his or her own critical faculties. Indeed, the prologues which precede many pairs of Lives and the synkriseis which follow them sometimes explicitly invite the reader's participation in the work of judging. The syncritic structure of the Parallel Lives also invites the reader's participation, as do the varying perspectives provided by a corpus of overlapping Lives.
In fact, the presence of a critical, engaged reader is presupposed by the agonistic nature of much of Greek literature, and of several texts in the Moralia which stage opposing viewpoints or arguments. Plutarch himself argues for such a reader in his How the young man should listen to poems.
© Copyright Timothy Duff 2011. All rights reserved.
© Copyright Timothy Duff 2010. All rights reserved.
© Copyright Timothy Duff 2010. All rights reserved.
‘Generic enrichment’, a term coined by Stephen Harrison with reference to Latin poetry, is used here to refer to the different ways in which a text of one genre might incorporate or evoke features of other genres. The fact that particular Plutarchan biographies may contain not only allusions to specific texts from a variety of genres, but also features such as vocabulary, phraseology, and plot-forms which evoke other genres, has been noticed sporadically by scholars. However, this is the first volume to discuss this feature as a distinct phenomenon across the corpus of Parallel Lives and to attempt an assessment of its effect. Chapters cover the interaction of Plutarchan biography with a series of genres, including archaic poetry, comedy, tragedy, historiography, philosophy, geographical and scientific texts, oratory, inscriptions, novelistic writing and periegetical works. Together these studies demonstrate the generic complexity and richness of Plutarch’s Lives, enhance our understanding of ancient biography in general and Plutarchan biography in particular, and explore the range of effects such generic enrichment might have on readers.
Generic Enrichment in Plutarch’s Lives is of interest to students and scholars of Plutarch and ancient biography, as well as to those working in other periods and genres of both Latin and Greek literature, and to those beyond the field of Classical Studies who are interested in questions of genre and literary theory.
Published in T. E. Duff and C. S. Chrysanthous 2025 (edd.), Generic Enrichment in Plutarch's Lives (Routledge), 1-28
This paper examines how Plutarch constructs the relationship between Alcibiades and the city of Athens in the early part of the Life of Alcibiades (chs. 4-8). It argues that, through these apparently disconnected stories, Plutarch combines the portraits of Alcibiades in Thucydides, Plato and Aristophanes with material from the orators and the anecdotal tradition not only to bring out Alcibiades’ domineering behaviour (hybris) and luxurious self-indulgence (tryphe) but also, through a series of shifting focalisations and voices, to characterize the Athenians and the dynamics of their interaction with Alcibiades. Furthermore, even though these anecdotes concern Alcibiades’ ‘personal’ life, they have explanatory force on the political level: that is, they explore and explain the mechanisms by which Alcibiades became so politically dominant, and would later be rejected so decisively. This is a portrait, in other words, not only of the great individual but also of the city which produced him.
Plato’s Charmides is notable as being the only Platonic text in which Socrates admits to feeling sexual desire for a young man. This paper examines three different receptions of this text: Oscar Wilde’s 666-line poem 'Charmides', C. P. Cavafy’s 8-line poem 'In a town of Osroene' (Ἐν πόλει τῆς Ὀσροηνῆς), and Plutarch’s much earlier 'Life of Alcibiades'. It focus on how the three authors respond to the erotic and philosophical element in the Charmides. It argues that:
Wilde’s 1881 'Charmides' provides an example of minimal textual engagement: the name Charmides is invoked solely for its connotations of young, male beauty; the tone is erotically charged but the homoerotic content is muted, and the philosophical element entirely absent.
In Cavafy’s 'In a town of Osroene', first printed in 1917, explicit allusion to ‘the Platonic Charmides’ in the last line recasts the poem an expression of homoerotic desire, and endows its group of young men with the prestige of a Platonic gathering and Platonic love.
In contrast, Plutarch’s engagement with the 'Charmides' in his 'Life of Alcibiades' is implicit, and depends entirely on the reader’s ability to recognise a series of detailed verbal echoes. Furthermore, while calling to mind the educational conversation with which Socrates engaged Charmides, Plutarch denies that Socrates’ motivation was sexual, and integrates allusion to the Charmides into a broader network of allusions to other passages in which Plato describes Socrates’ encounters with beautiful young men, or the ideal relationship of a mature man with a younger beloved, in which the sexual element is entirely absent. In so doing, Plutarch “corrects” Plato with Plato, and removes what had become an embarrassment in his period.
The first is the ‘backgrounding’ use of the imperfective. It is com- mon in the Lives for the broader historical context to be related in the imperfective, that is, through verbs in the present or imperfect tenses, primarily the imperfect in- dicative and present participle. As a result, events in which the subject of the Lives was not involved are presented not as a narrated sequence but as a backdrop against which the subject’s actions, narrated in the aorist, stand out. Such a use corresponds with a quickening of narrative time.
The second characteristic use of the imperfective is to create vivid, slow-motion tableaux, in which events are narrated as though from the perspective of a participant; that is, in such cases, narrative perspective changes from an ‘external’ to an ‘internal’ one.
Analysis of a passage from the Were the Athenians more glorious in war or wisdom? (346F – 347C) shows that Plutarch himself connected the second technique with vivid, pictorial writing and was aware that it was associated with both an internal perspective and a slowing of narrative time.
Fuller discussion of this topic can be found in Duff, T. E. (2015), ‘Aspect and subordination in Plutarchan narrative’. In R. Ash, J. Mossman and F. B. Titchener (edd.), Fame and infamy: essays for Christopher Pelling on characterization in Greek and Roman biography and history, 129-148. OUP: Oxford.
© Copyright Timothy Duff 2011. All rights reserved.
© Timothy E Duff. All rights reserved.""
However, the application of any moral lessons is left to the reader's own judgement. Furthermore, Plutarch's use of multiple focalisations means that the reader is sometimes presented with varying ways of looking at the same individual or the same historical situation. In addition, many incidents or anecdotes are marked by 'multivalence': that is, they resist reduction to a single moral message or lesson. In such cases, the reader is encouraged to exercise his or her own critical faculties. Indeed, the prologues which precede many pairs of Lives and the synkriseis which follow them sometimes explicitly invite the reader's participation in the work of judging. The syncritic structure of the Parallel Lives also invites the reader's participation, as do the varying perspectives provided by a corpus of overlapping Lives.
In fact, the presence of a critical, engaged reader is presupposed by the agonistic nature of much of Greek literature, and of several texts in the Moralia which stage opposing viewpoints or arguments. Plutarch himself argues for such a reader in his How the young man should listen to poems.
© Copyright Timothy Duff 2011. All rights reserved.
© Copyright Timothy Duff 2010. All rights reserved.
© Copyright Timothy Duff 2010. All rights reserved.