Articles by Sara De Martin
Sileno, 2023
[pdf with extract of the paper] This paper engages with a couplet of the Theognidean Sylloge (Thg... more [pdf with extract of the paper] This paper engages with a couplet of the Theognidean Sylloge (Thgn. 255-256), which Aristotle quotes (with slight changes) and says to be inscribed in Delos. After a survey of the textual transmission of the distich and the problems it presents, I examine the text’s engagement with the ubiquitous archaic and classical topos of ‘what is best for man’. The suitability of the couplet for both the sympotic context and the inscriptional one is then emphasised, and it is considered in the light of the Theognidea’s belonging to the tradition of the discourse of wisdom.
Lexis, 2022
This paper examines how socio-political and cultural change is discussed in selected archaic and ... more This paper examines how socio-political and cultural change is discussed in selected archaic and classical Greek texts (Thgn. 53-60, 287-92; Pherecr. fr. 155 K.-A.; Aristoph. Nub. 889-1023; Pl. Lg. 700a-701c). The analysis underlines the thematic, rhetorical and stylistic features and the moral preoccupations that are common to these sources, arguing that they all participate in an intertextual 'discourse on change'.
Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 2022
The article discusses an adjusted Theognidean quotation in Pherecr. fr. 162 K.-A. (Thgn. 467 and ... more The article discusses an adjusted Theognidean quotation in Pherecr. fr. 162 K.-A. (Thgn. 467 and 469 part.), which serves to thematise fifth-century cultural and educational developments that challenged traditional paideia.
Chapters by Sara De Martin
Wisdom Discourse in the Ancient World, 2024
The chapter investigates how some archaic Greek texts seek a recognition of their wisdom status b... more The chapter investigates how some archaic Greek texts seek a recognition of their wisdom status by mobilising strategies of authority. Working on selected archaic Greek moral poetry (Hesiod's Works and Days, Theognis, Phocylides, Hipparchus), the contribution analyses some shared stylistic and pragmatic features (gnomic style, and the prominence of the source of the advice) that are deployed to shape receivers' reactions. The dissection of the authority posture in advice texts sheds light on the preoccupation of wisdom discourse for its own reception, and is proposed as a way to approach its cross-genericity.
R. Berardi, M. Filosa and D. Massimo (eds.) Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020
Edited books by Sara De Martin
Wisdom Discourse in the Ancient World, 2024
This book moves beyond the debate on ‘wisdom literature’, ongoing in biblical studies, to demonst... more This book moves beyond the debate on ‘wisdom literature’, ongoing in biblical studies, to demonstrate the productivity of ‘wisdom’ as a literary category. Featuring work by scholars of Egyptology, classics, biblical and Near Eastern studies, it offers fresh perspectives on what makes a text ‘wisdom’.
Book Reviews by Sara De Martin
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2022
The debate on lyric genres and the criteria for their definition is notoriously long-standing and... more The debate on lyric genres and the criteria for their definition is notoriously long-standing and multifaceted. This volume marks a new step in studies of genre and lyric, and does so by 'think[ing] laterally', an expression used by David Fearn ('Greek Lyric of the Archaic and Classical Periods', Classical Poetry 1 (2020), 1-113, 68) to highlight the need for a methodologically comprehensive approach to lyric. Most chapters have been developed from presentations given at a conference of the Network for the Study of Archaic and Classical Greek Song (Berkeley, 2015). The introduction (1-28) maps the paradigms applied to the study of genres in classical literature from the 1950s to the present, providing a precious tool for scholars and students alike. It then lays out the theoretical models that inform the eleven chapters, and their contributions. In his keynote chapter on Sappho, Gregory Nagy (31-54) expands on his earlier work, arguing that genre structures performance, 'capturing' the primary performance occasion, that is, making it a theme of song and 'absolutizing' it. On the other hand, Sappho's songs can thematize topics unrelated to the performance context, however intimate (for example, family crisis): the song's persona and world are only mimetic, and could be re-enacted by a chorus on ritual occasions. Andrew Ford (57-81) opens Part 1 ('Genre, Generification, and Performance') by looking at the functionality of genres. He examines how they are spoken of, and thus created ('generified'), in texts antedating Plato's and Aristotle's definitions of mimesis. Ford argues that such texts engage with genres, their distinctive features and their origins, to locate themselves within an authoritative tradition. Timothy Power (82-108) proposes that some poems by Sappho, commonly regarded as choral (for instance, frs 17 and 30 Voigt), could instead be monodic, and thus only 'parachoral': choral performance during rituals (for example, weddings) would be a theme of solo singing, rather than the real performative mode of those poems. Francesca Schironi (109-32) shows how Pindaric scholia account for the choral nature of Pindar's poetry: they disregard the reality of choral performances (who sings what) and hold the chorus purely as a poetic persona, a speaking character, not unlike the voice of Pindar and that of the victor. Three chapters engage with 'generic mixing' (Part 2). Deborah Steiner (135-66) regards catalogic lists as a genre, and examines the shared traits of literary catalogues and textual and visual representations of choruses. She argues that catalogues in epic are informed by the visuality of choral performances, while choral songs, in turn, might look at hexameter poetry when including a catalogue. Drawing chiefly from Euripidean plays, Naomi Weiss (167-90) shows how tragic choral parts engage with many choral genres. She makes a compelling case for the complementation of musical narrative, achieved through generic modulations in choral songs, and dramatic narrative, maintaining that such deep interconnection is a defining trait of tragedy. Margaret Foster (191-228) reads Bacchylides' Ode 16 as upholding the local and autonomous character of specific song genres. Yet, at the same time, the ode, by compressing the narrative of Sophocles' Trachiniae and thus changing the genre of its medium, makes tragedy, a distinctively Attic genre, ready for importation and performance in other communities. Opening the last part on the 'somatics of genre', Mark Griffith (231-70) takes less travelled paths and a welcome turn to Korybantic-type musical rituals. He analyses Aristotle's take on the functions of music, dwelling specially on emotional arousal, typical of Korybantic-type performances. He then highlights the formal, social and functional (affective) features that, he argues, make Korybantic rituals a distinct genre within Greek song culture. Mario Telo (271-97) suggestively searches for 'hint[s] of iambic texture' (290) in iambic texts and some reception instances, highlighting the rough, spiky, frigid features of bodies, objects and places mentioned in iambos. He holds the psychosomatic effects roused in the audience by such iambic imagery and language to be intrinsic features of the iambic genre. Seth Estrin (298-324) analyses a sixth-century BC elegiac inscription on an Ambracian cenotaph, arguing that a disjunctive tension is realized in the metrical structure: the hexameter makes us visualize the dead, whereas the pentameter takes us back to the reality of death, absence. Such a disjunctive structure, he maintains, is a generic feature of funerary elegy; it is extended to the materiality of the Ambracian inscription and of the monument, and consequently to the bodily and cognitive experience they impose
PhD Thesis by Sara De Martin
PhD Thesis - abstract and table of contents
Talks and presentations by Sara De Martin
This paper centres on Athenaeus’ appropriations of metasympotic poetry known as by the Greek arch... more This paper centres on Athenaeus’ appropriations of metasympotic poetry known as by the Greek archaic poet Theognis.
International Plutarch Society Panel 'Literary Banquets of the Imperial Era'
In this paper, following a comparative analysis of some stylistic and pragmatic features of Hesio... more In this paper, following a comparative analysis of some stylistic and pragmatic features of Hesiod's 'Works and Days' and of the Theognidea, I identify the defining formal elements of paraenesis as reception-determining devices that invite reuses; I therefore argue that ever-applicability is a function of paraenesis. I then break down archaic paraenesis as conventional poetics that are modelled on spoken discourse and I shift to the consideration of paraenesis, and of the reperformability that it enables, in so-called wisdom literature. Ultimately, I conclude that the reperformability and versatility inherent in archaic paraenesis are central to the functions of wisdom literature. I suggest that this awareness might function as a pivot to update our understanding of the category ‘wisdom literature’ and the applications of the label.
https://ampraw2018.wixsite.com/home/programme
https://www.academia.edu/36435824/Lyric_Beyond_Lyric_2018
If, reflecting on authorial equivocality, authenticity and authorship, we decide to refer to the ... more If, reflecting on authorial equivocality, authenticity and authorship, we decide to refer to the Theognidea, we hit an easy target. However, my paper will not deal with the most classical points of the "Theognidean question", but will show how entangled the correlations between traditional wisdom, authority and gnomic features are in the case of the reception of Theognis.
https://ics.sas.ac.uk/events/event/6663
Conferences, Workshops, Seminars by Sara De Martin
Please consider submitting a paper proposal for the panel 'The Wisdom of Many? Maxims Between Upp... more Please consider submitting a paper proposal for the panel 'The Wisdom of Many? Maxims Between Upper and Lower-Class Culture in the Greek and Roman World', to be held at the 16th Celtic Conference in Classics, 15-18 July 2025, Coimbra.
Submission deadline: 20 February 2025
https://www.uc.pt/cech/16-ccc/calls/
King's College London, 30th-31st May 2019.
The aim of this two-day conference is to create a f... more King's College London, 30th-31st May 2019.
The aim of this two-day conference is to create a fruitful and synergic environment for debate by bringing together postgraduates and early career researchers from across the UK and abroad working on, or interested in, ancient wisdom literature. Particularly, we aim at exploring and dissecting the intertwining of literary and religious elements in texts that are normally labelled as ‘wisdom literature’.
Language and Literature Sub-Faculty Seminar (Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford) [co-organised with Sara De Martin], 2024
Uploads
Articles by Sara De Martin
Chapters by Sara De Martin
Edited books by Sara De Martin
Book Reviews by Sara De Martin
PhD Thesis by Sara De Martin
Talks and presentations by Sara De Martin
International Plutarch Society Panel 'Literary Banquets of the Imperial Era'
Conferences, Workshops, Seminars by Sara De Martin
Submission deadline: 20 February 2025
https://www.uc.pt/cech/16-ccc/calls/
The aim of this two-day conference is to create a fruitful and synergic environment for debate by bringing together postgraduates and early career researchers from across the UK and abroad working on, or interested in, ancient wisdom literature. Particularly, we aim at exploring and dissecting the intertwining of literary and religious elements in texts that are normally labelled as ‘wisdom literature’.
International Plutarch Society Panel 'Literary Banquets of the Imperial Era'
Submission deadline: 20 February 2025
https://www.uc.pt/cech/16-ccc/calls/
The aim of this two-day conference is to create a fruitful and synergic environment for debate by bringing together postgraduates and early career researchers from across the UK and abroad working on, or interested in, ancient wisdom literature. Particularly, we aim at exploring and dissecting the intertwining of literary and religious elements in texts that are normally labelled as ‘wisdom literature’.