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A.R. 1.609-1077: An Intertextual and Interpretative Commentary.

Kenny, Timothy Michael

[Thesis]. Manchester, UK: The University of Manchester; 2016.

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Abstract

A syntagmatic analysis of the Argonauts’ encounters with the Lemnian women and the Doliones in Apollonius of Rhodius’ Argonautica Book 1. Combining intertextuality with cognitive narratology, I approach the text from the perspective of the reader. Beginning with a study of the poem’s programmatic proem before moving to a study of the Argonauts’ first encounters on their outward journey, I map the reader’s experience on their own voyage through a difficult and elliptical narrative. To tackle the demands of a densely allusive text and the manipulations of a subjective narrator, I employ a plurality of readers: the general reader is accompanied on this exploration by two fictional readers. Charting the varying interpretations of the attentive reader and the experienced reader (Homeric auditor and Homeric scholar respectively) enables me to combine investigation of text and intertexts as moderated by the narrator with analysis of the ways they modify the expectations of the reader as they progress in a linear fashion from episode to episode. By consideration of where interpretations overlap and where they differ according to what the reader brings to the text and of how the narrative conditions its readers on the journey, I demonstrate the value of the reader-orientated approach to tackling the complexities of the narrative and the demands it places on all its readers.