Authorial voice and the addressee in Pausanias' Periegesis

Författare

Johanna Akujärvi

Summary, in English

Pausanias’ Hellados Periegesis has proven to be difficult to group with other ancient works, whether preserved or not. In light of its highly varied subject matter, it is tempting to sort Pausanias together with other authors of miscellanies from the second century AD, like Aelian and Athenaeus. Like the Deipnosophistae and the Varia historia among other works, the Periegesis is a collection of facts, pieces of information and curiosities on various objects and subjects. But it differs in its manner of presenting its material. Pausanias avoids the appearance of random ordering and selecting of the material by creating a ubiquitous yet unobtrusive frame narrative with a strong organising nucleus: a narrative of a tour to the sites and sights of Greece. Obviously, travel normally moves linearly from point A to Z via points B, C, D etc. So does the travel narrated in the Periegesis. The frame narrative provides the work with a topographical thread along which the sites and sights of Greece are noted, and the stories that these elicit, or rather: appear to elicit, are told. However, in the scholarship on the Periegesis only one part of the frame (narrative) of the Periegesis is commonly recognised, viz. the topographical thread, which is a secondary aspect of the frame. The frame narrative itself tends to be overlooked.

Though elusive and unobtrusive, the frame narrative of the Periegesis is worth studying. In it we encounter the narrative of a travel through Greece undertaken (mostly) by an impersonal, indefinite travelling persona. This aspect of the frame is indebted to the Periploi. More importantly, in the frame narrative there are numerous first-person statements in which the author-narrator comments on various aspects of the material and on his labour prior to and associated with constructing the text. In the end, the authorial voice comes across as strongly influenced by Herodotean historiography. In this paper I propose to examine the gradual development of the interplay between the ‘I’ and the traveller in the frame narrative, and the place of the Herodotean authorial voice within this peripluic narrative frame.

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