[B-Greek] poetry and agency (was Sophocles' Ajax (was "Voice matters again"))

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Thu Mar 26 21:34:14 EDT 2009


On Mar 26, 2009, at 12:41 PM, Carl Conrad wrote:

> But Sophocles is a poet, and no mean one at that. I hardly think  
> that this passage offers significant evidence regarding any sort of  
> standard practice of voice usage or modes of indicating agent.

While I was out today I was thinking about this statement, mulling it  
over. In non-poetic text, it is generally assumed that an agent (or  
any participant) will be given a full noun phrase upon being  
introduced (or reintroduced) to the story and after that will be  
reduced to a pronoun or in the case of languages with verb inflection  
for person, reduced to a verb ending.  However, if we in run into a  
finite verb in the beginning of a text with no agent available from  
the preceding context, then one way out is to assume that the agent  
would be "accessible" from the shared cultural framework of the author  
and intended audience. If both of these tests fail, then we have a  
case of a missing agent (sounds like a spy novel). Has this agent been  
demoted? Perhaps s/he was "eliminated".

A question about poetry, do all these assumptions simply not apply to  
poetic text?

Elizabeth Kline







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