okay, really avoiding those epigrams

But here's this remarkable timeline! Which shows the importance of every major empire in world history: importance by width, duration by length.  Click on  "Wait but why" for the full-size version, with legible text:

Morituri, etc.

From time to time I feel we should all be reminded of the immortal wisdom of Matt Groening.

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English: Marble bust of Nossis (Greek poetess, 3.rd century B.C.) Italiano: Nosside di Locri (poetessa greca), III secolo aC. Busto di Francesco Jerace (1854-1936) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In brief, the Dollhouse/Sophocles idea has not really panned out, though I think I have (after prolonged fiddling with other alternatives) finally found a way in, using Nick Lowe's book on The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative.  But I have set that aside for the moment to look at female-authored epigrams in the ancient world.  I wrote on Nossis, one such author, several years ago, and am now taking a look at the entire corpus (there are only about 40, some dubious).  Anyte is the other major author; there are a couple by Moero of Byzantium, a couple said to be by Erinna, and 3 attributed to Sappho.  The Hellenistic period allowed women both to be poets and to be known as poets in ways that were not permitted in eras in which all poetry was publicly performed by the author.  This week I have put together a collection of all the source material.

Echo becomes Ajax; Iphigenia fails to become Buffy, poor thing

Dollhouse characters. L to R: Paul Ballard, Victor, Echo, Sierra, Topher Brink, Adelle DeWitt, Boyd Langton (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know for a certainty that there are many other things I should be doing, but am enjoying writing about Dollhouse and Sophocles way too much to stop. Would Sophocles have survived if he'd had to write serial television? Can character development ever = character stasis? Does an ensemble TV series ever = Oedipus? Just how classical is Whedon?
However, today I will put off these questions because working on Iphigenia and Buffy. So, still having fun.

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Sophocles and Dollhouse

I have been struggling to revise an overlong conference paper I gave, or gave part of, a few years ago in Seattle, trying to see if I can turn it into an article; or, failing an article, a draft I can link on academia.edu in the "conference paper I don't plan to publish" category. So far, I'm failing dismally. The subject is in what ways the character "Echo" in Joss Whedon's series "Dollhouse" is a Sophoclean hero, and how that matters. But this subject leads me apparently unavoidably into philosophical questions that I really don't want to engage, at least not in what was supposed to be a light-hearted pop culture paper (What is reality? Do souls exist? Is chocolate a necessary food group?)
At the very least, I don't think there's any way I can revise the paper, which should probably have been titled in its original form "every single thing I can think of that interests me about Dollhouse, in no particular order", to make it answer the original question. I can start a new paper on that question, but I don't think I can revise this one to fit.
On the other hand, I have always hated revising more than anything. I would far rather write a new thing than revise an old thing so that it actually works. So perhaps I shouldn't throw in the towel yet.

I have, I think, thought of the solution: more research! Or to quote Matt Groening's advice to grad students on how to avoid the agony of writing: when all else fails, "Read another book". I'm sure someone out there has already answered all the interesting philosophical questions in Dollhouse, and I can just cite them, and get back to Sophocles.

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Sophocles, Dollhouse, and academia.edu

Cover of Dollhouse Epitaphs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I spent Thursday evening updating my listing on academia.edu, and decided to upload a few conference papers, if I had any lying around that I was unlikely to write up for publication, but that people might be interested in reading.  In the end I settled on a few that were more likely to be of interest to non-classicists.  So I have uploaded one on Helen in the Penelopiad, and one on Atanarjuat and the Oresteia, in addition to the old "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Greek Hero Revisited" which is by far the most widely-read piece I have ever written.  On looking through my other conference papers I found another that might interest Whedonites, on Sophocles and Dollhouse, but it isn't in shape to be seen yet (quite literally; I can only find the outline, and it needs rewriting).  So that's what I've been doing today.  

Was this what needs to be done? Or, to put it another way, was it the most urgent of the tasks before me? Well, hardly.  But in fact that paper raised some very interesting questions, at least for me, and it is a pleasure to think through some of them again.

Thank you, JSTOR

And thank you, "articles that cite this article", in JSTOR.  And thank you, JSTOR beta-search:

• Detienne, Marcel (1968:2012), ‘On Efficacy in Practical Reason: Comparative Approaches’, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 20 (1), 43-60.
• Gaskin, Richard (1990), ‘Do Homeric heroes make real decisions?’, The Classical Quarterly, 40 (1), 1-15.
• Jones, PV (1996), ‘The independent heroes of the Iliad’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 108-18.
• Rosenmeyer, TG (1990), ‘Decision-Making’, Apeiron, 23 (4), 187-218.
• Sharples, RW (1983), ‘’But Why Has My Spirit Spoken with Me Thus?’: Homeric Decision-Making’, Greece & Rome, 30 (1), 1-7.
• Wilson, Joseph P (2007), ‘Homer and the Will of Zeus’, College Literature, 34 (2), 150-73.

This gives me enough to begin with.  Especially Rosenmeyer.  Thank you, Rosenmeyer. And Sharples.