AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

This thesis examines a large set of evidence in relation to the myth of the Judgement of Paris. Representations of this myth appeared in both literary and artistic media during antiquity. I will consider those preserved testimonies dated up to the 6th century AD. The relevant contributions of Christoph Clairmont (1951) and Irmgard Raab (1972) in regard to the artistic representations of the Judgement of Paris in antiquity are enlarged here through an extensive discussion of literary sources and the addition of new artworks not included in the catalogue of each. Before analysing the testimonies, I classify them in accordance with their medium, either literature or art. After this, I analyse them with regard to the literary genre or the artistic style that better describes each work. This generic analysis is followed by a contextual analysis that relates to the time and the place where each work was produced. In analysing the contexts, I give a special place to Athens, setting it apart from the rest of Greek contexts. The reason for doing this is the impressive amount of Athenian painted vases that represent the Judgement of Paris, for they comprise almost two thirds of the whole preserved output from antiquity. The thesis aims to explore the development of literary and artistic representations of the Judgement of Paris throughout antiquity, showing the place this story holds in the culture of the Graeco-Roman world. It also aims to investigate the connections between works of a single medium, whether art or literature, and between these two media of representation. In doing so, it uncovers the relationship between genre and narrative, and the transmission process of the Judgement of Paris into different contexts through art and literature. There is a list of artworks (Appendix 1) including the concordances to Clairmont (1951), Raab (1972), Beazley (1942, 1963, 1971 & 1978) & Carpenter (1989), Haspels (1936), the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, and the Beazley Archive Database (http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/index.htm). Descriptions of art objects depicting undefined episodes of the Judgement of Paris are given in Appendix 2. Appendix 3 is a catalogue of objects not classified in the thesis. 66 plates of 177 artworks are included in Appendix 4. In order to meet the requirements for submitting a digital copy of this thesis, several images have been omitted in Appendix 4 (Plates). The omitted images are indicated by the “Copyright Material” caption.