Iambic configurations: Iambos from Archilochus to Horace (Callimachus, Greece, Roman Republic, Roman Empire)

The aim of my dissertation is twofold. The first object of the study is to show that the poems of Archilochus, the reputed protos heuretes ("first founder") of the genre lambos, were performed rhapsodically. The second part of my dissertation explores the ways in which Horace and Callimachus don the masks of Archilochus and Hipponax. Throughout, this analysis explores the configuration of "iambic" features around a central, but multivalent, poet-persona, evident in these four iambic poets.; The first half of the dissertation, then, presents a detailed analysis of Archilochean performance, stressing the unique quality of the poet-persona as a distinguishing feature of genre in the rhapsodic context. The performance of poetry attached to the names of Homer and Hesiod figures these poets as conduits of the Muses. This is in stark contrast to the poet-persona of Archilochus, who relates his triumphs and travails in a way that makes the disconnect between poet and performer obvious. The second half of the dissertation shows how later iambicists utilized this disconnect within a literary culture of the text. In detailed readings of their poems, this part of the study shows how gender and representation are implicated in the distance between poet-persona and performer, on the one hand, and author, on the other.