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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until August 09, 2026

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“And in whom do you most delight?” Poets, Im/mortals, and the Homeric Hymns

Romano, Carman V
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3724-4335
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1624980070829234

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Greek and Latin.
In the first portion of this project, I analyze the myths of the Homeric Hymns from a divine vantage point, exploring the ways in which their narrators ask the divine to “delight” in their work. Unsurprisingly, deities enjoy hearing of their own superiority, and I argue that the Hymns’ mythic scenes of epiphany efficiently crystallize that superiority into narrative form. Because epiphany forces a direct confrontation between god and human, it provides an opportunity for the poet to juxtapose god with mortal, efficiently revealing their insurmountable differences. In particular, by way of the epiphanic scene, the poet, in order that his divine audience might “delight in him the most,” communicates to his titular divinity the total insufficiency of human beings to interact with the divine. I focus, however, on the context in which these epiphanic scenes are deployed, and I ask how that context might affect the entire mythic narrative’s appeal, especially to mortal audiences. In the second piece of this project, I delve into the poems’ appeal to mortal audiences, and examine how the Hymns’ poets use dramatic irony, framing devices, and humor to “delight” the human beings listening to their compositions. I argue that the poets seek to flatter their mortal audiences by providing them with information deliberately withheld from mortal characters. Even further, the Hymns’ narrators reveal to their mortal listeners information withheld from divine characters as well. The singer of one of the myths incorporated into Hymn to Apollo, for example, lets his audience know the trick about to be played on Apollo, thus allowing the usually terrifying god to be humiliated—much to the mortal audience’s “delight.” I hone in especially on the Hymn to Hermes and argue that its poet subverts the type-casting deployed in the other Hymns’ mythic scenes of epiphany at divine expense. I show how the narrator of the myth relayed in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, rather than leverage the type-cast of shocked human against the piece’s sole mortal character (as the audience, both divine and mortal, would expect), he instead forces Apollo into this stereotypical role. This inversion, I hypothesize, would surely “delight” not only the tricky Hermes, but also the Hymn’s mortal audience, who are allowed for the duration of the mythic narrative a sense of superiority over Apollo. Although this project began with the Homeric Hymns, I contextualize my arguments concerning divine-human interaction in this genre among examples from Pindar, Sappho, and Homeric epic. Each of these poets, I show, deploy divine-mortal interaction to articulate the various positions that mortals, both within mythic narrative and beyond its confines, can occupy in relation to the gods. My dissertation explores the complex relationship between human and deity and reveals in part the theology that underpins ancient Greek poetry.
Sarah Iles Johnston (Advisor)
Carolina López-Ruiz (Committee Member)
Thomas Hawkins (Committee Member)
238 p.
Classical Studies
Homeric Hymns; Greek poetry; Ancient Greek religion; hymns; classical studies; classics; poetry; myth; Greek myth; myth

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Romano, C. V. (2021). “And in whom do you most delight?” Poets, Im/mortals, and the Homeric Hymns [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1624980070829234

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Romano, Carman. “And in whom do you most delight?” Poets, Im/mortals, and the Homeric Hymns. 2021. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1624980070829234.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Romano, Carman. "“And in whom do you most delight?” Poets, Im/mortals, and the Homeric Hymns." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1624980070829234

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1624980070829234
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.