Therefore, a theoretical framework inspired by narratology, phenomenology and metaphor theory is developed in the first chapter. My central research question concerns the role space has in archaic Greek lyric poetry (7th-5th C.B.C.). 196a) and will argue that reading the fragment through this lens can provide a solution to the vexed question of the poem’s ending. The longest section of the paper deals with the Cologne Epode (fr.

188 uses the locus amoenus’ normal associations with youth and beauty in order to cruelly invert the trope and attack an older woman for her lack of sexual desirability, while frr 30 and 31 subtly invoke the association between the female body and the earth to cast aspersions onto the moral character of the young girl described. Our understanding of all of these poems is enriched by reading them through the filter of the Greek locus amoenus or ‘meadow of love’. The paper will look in particular at four fragments which engage particularly richly with this theme: frr. This motif is a well worn one, with deep roots in myth and ritual as well as literary instantiations such as the Hieros Gamos in Iliad 14 or the abduction of Persephone in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and Archilochus uses the audience’s familiarity with the conceptual linking of female and natural fertility in order to reinterpret the trope. The paper investigates this theme with particular reference to Archilochus’ erotic imagery, and the main section deals with the imagery of nature and fertility which is a recurrent theme both in Archilochus’ erotic iamboi and in the wider archaic Greek tradition. I argue that Archilochus’ use of imagery is highly creative, and that he reworks conventional motifs in a way which plays on and undercuts their usual role in the poetic tradition. This paper explores Archilochus’ imagery and its relationship to his poetic and cultural precedents.

Greek Lyric Poetry by M.L. West