Crafting images: Critical and aesthetic discourse in post-classical Greek literature

This dissertation examines the discourse of first-person evaluation in post-Classical (Hellenistic and Second Sophistic) literature. Drawing on the sociological terms of Pierre Bourdieu, it argues that critical evaluation of aesthetic objects shares both a discourse and an aim with critical evaluation of erotic objects. That aim is the accumulation of symbolic capital. When speakers evaluate and criticize, they draw from a stock of normative terms and rhetorical strategies which can be applied to a range of objects. The validity and force of evaluation depends on the ability to distinguish between terms and strategies and properly deploy them. The successful outcome of evaluation distinguishes a speaker, raising his or her status in the eyes of the audience. The dissertation terms this status-seeking self-presentation "image-crafting.";Over four chapters, I follow out the process of image-crafting. The first chapter establishes the theoretical apparatus and methodological approach, applying them to Theocritus' Idylls to demonstrate their range. The second chapter focuses on image-crafting in erotic evaluation of love objects. The third chapter addresses the relationship between overt and covert criticism of literature and image-crafting. The dissertation culminates in a fourth chapter that looks at the convergence of aesthetic and erotic image-crafting; that is, in the evaluation of statues and other artistic representations of bodies. The fourth chapter also elaborates on a secondary consequence of image-crafting: ekphrasis, or the summoning of an image before the reader through descriptive evaluations. In encountering and evaluating works of art, a first-person speaker frequently finds him or herself positing an erotic subject behind or within the work; the terms of critical judgment do double duty as the speaker attempts to validate him or herself both in respect to the aesthetic object materially present before him or her, and the absent but erotically charged body that it represents. In effect, the chapter offers a new model for understanding ekphrasis and first-person evaluation. The conclusion moves beyond the Classical world, taking up image-crafting in the works of Keats and Tennyson as they respond to the literature of Theocritus.