| Summary: | <p>Despite scholarly interest in the affective power of epic sport, its emotional potential has never been examined in detail. In exploring this subject, the present thesis pursues two goals: first, to offer detailed interpretations of a selection of epic sports narratives by a text-centred reading of their potential to create emotive effects, and secondly, to develop these readings by means of diachronic comparison. The prolegomena of the thesis first set the parameters of the investigation, establishing the material of the study, the reader model to be used, and the emotive effects it targets. In the chapters that follow, two of these effects, suspense and pity, are selected for an in-depth theoretical discussion, resulting in narratological categories of analysis.</p>
<p>The main section of the thesis comprises six case studies which fall into two groups. The first is occupied with racing in the context of funeral games and examines three chariot races (Homer, Statius, and Silius Italicus) and a naval contest (Virgil). Based on models delineating the conditions under which a narrative might plausibly elicit an effect, these studies provide new readings of the contests, illuminating, for example, how narrators create suspense as to the victor’s identity and pity for the defeated, but also elicit surprise when a pursuit ends contrary to expectations. With the progression of these investigations, the comparative approach intensifies. One result is the emergence of a pattern showing different tendencies of effects in the four races; another is the increasing importance of allusion in influencing affective engagement. The second group of case studies illustrates ‘challenge contests’ and covers two versions of the boxing match from the Argonautica saga (Apollonius Rhodes and Valerius Flaccus). These chapters reveal, among other things, how the two narrators use allusion to establish the protagonist and the antagonist and build emotional engagement with the contestants ahead of the fight and towards its outcome, but also how the Flavian account aims for a stronger impact; the chapters moreover consider how the rich embedding of these contests into the plot of the epic in different ways influences their affective power. The concluding discussion is devoted to a review of the main results; it closes by indicating some areas of interest for future research into emotive effects, sport, and epic.</p>
|
|---|