Anna Lamari - Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama

Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes

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ISBN 9783110621020

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In Platos Phaedrus, Socrates argues that a text should follow the principles reflected in the composition of a human body:

, , , .

every discourse should be set together like a living creature, by having a kind of body of its own, so that it is neither headless nor footless, but having middle parts and edges, written in such a way as to fit together with each other and with the whole.

(Plat. Phdr. 264c)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines literary form in terms similar to Plato, as including the arrangement and order of the different parts of the whole. Should a fragment be considered by and in itself? What happens when the body of the text is lost? Platos metaphor serves as an appropriate starting point for discussing fragments and fragmentation.

Texts may have been incomplete for a variety of reasons and in different ways; the historical work of Thucydides, for example, breaks off in the middle of the sentence. His eighth book survives in what would seem to be a rough version, the author having died before he could complete his work. The fragmentary could be the vestige, all that is left behind from a fractured whole. But it might also have been left incomplete from the outset, only positing an incipient or potential Imagination serves as a vehicle for connecting philosophical and philological treatments of fragmentation. The literary theorist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht addresses one of the most crucial methodological issues in approaching fragments: the question of reconstruction.

In the case of a landscape, imagining the wholeness of what is present merely as a fragment must rely on geological and physical probability, supported perhaps by a certain kind of aesthetic judgment that may come from remembering other mountains and other valleys. For the case of any artefact that we consider to be a fragment, in contrast, imagining its state of wholeness will come from imagining the intention of its producer. Once we have imagined, on the basis of a fragment, a Gestalt that we think corresponds (however roughly) to the primary intention of a producer, we can begin to establish a typology of different kinds of fragments by distinguishing different principles that may have interfered with the (product of the) producers original intention.

Being by its very nature incomplete, the fragment stimulates our imagination as we attempt to complete it or reconstruct the lost whole. Here lies the core of the scholarly philological work, and of textual criticism in particular. The extent to which imagination and creativity should play their role in reconstructing the context or lacunae remains a matter for philological debate. In order to progress beyond the first associations and in order to reconstruct and restore an original entity, we need to combine imagination and creativity with precise textual and contextual knowledge, and also with detailed observations on the fragment.

Fragmentation as a concept and model is crucial for modern and even more for postmodern literature. Jacques Derrida referred to la forme de lcrit, where various elements, plot, character, themes, imagery and factual references are fragmented and dispersed throughout the work. planned, are forced together through form, by being placed alongside one another, and through this, a new range of meanings are released.

Perhaps contrasted to traditional narratives of wholeness, fragments have been called metaphor[s] of modernity, and fragmentation has been understood as a concept constituting the essence of modernity itself. As the fragmentary posits the whole, deconstruction must operate within the whole by mobilizing the separate and disjointing the various properties of a text. The consequent de-empowerment of the reader and interpreter is, however, not viewed as a failure, but is considered the objective of deconstruction. Fragments and fragmentation have come to refer less to the text itself and more to chasms in the process of understanding. The focus has shifted from the fragmented text to the readers fragmented mind. At the same time, the experience of radical illegibility is the only authentic experience of a text which is itself dismembered.

It is precisely the taste of the fragmentary and the abrupt, the incomplete completeness described above, that has rendered the fragmentation in ancient texts a focus of scholarly attention. Ancient fragmentary literature is found in all possible forms. The text can be interspersed with lacunae and elements of everyday language, and intermixed with poetry and biblical references, all of these contributing to syntactical interruptions and grammatical deformities. Works of Greek and Latin literature are preserved often only in the form of quotations, or of summaries in later, better-preserved authors. At times, it is only the titles or topics of lost texts that are known. Such a fragmentary transmission can occur due to external influences like damage caused by mould, worming, water and fire. But it may also result from the circumstances of the time: politics, cultural upheavals, migration and wars.

The complex problems associated with the interpretation of fragmentary texts and the concept of fragment itself are dealt with extensively by Glenn Most.

Most also discusses the tendency to regard fragments as partes pro toto. Our approach to texts which we have through direct transmission in toto might perhaps be contrasted with our understanding of those same texts had they been transmitted only indirectly as fragments. Various hermeneutic circles render this issue even more complicated. Important considerations include the quotation context and the reasons for an author/text-bearer quoting a text. The reasons for quotation are influenced by the completeness, the exactitude, and, more generally, the manner in which the author makes the quote, and his or her relation to the quoted passage.

For Most, genre is critical. Poetic, philosophical and historical fragments cannot be regarded in the same light. Poetic fragments are usually cited for their particular wording, at least by grammarians, metricians, and scholiasts, and, as a result, they have for the most part been transmitted with a high degree of sincerity. The exact wording of philosophical fragments was perhaps less important than the doctrine or argument they convey; often they were cited by opponents who may not have been inclined to quote them with exactitude. Historical fragments were usually cited for the chronological or geographic information they contained and are the least likely to have preserved the wording of the original. This present volume on fragmentation in drama draws on Mosts discussion of genre. Dramatic fragments belong to his first group poetic fragments quoted with a high degree of sincerity. The performative context and history of Ancient Greek theatre, however, and also modes of thought connected to the life of theatre more generally, are particularly significant for the interpretation of such fragments.