Untimely Epic

Following graduate work at the University of Oxford, Tom Phillips was a Junior Research Fellow and then a Supernumerary Fellow at Merton College. He moved to the University of Manchester in September 2018 where he is currently Lecturer in Classical Literature. His research focuses on archaic and classical lyric, Hellenistic poetry, and ancient scholarly culture.

• Introduction I. Vocabularies II. Textual Performances III. Form and Fashioning IV. The Cosmic and the Momentary 1: Affecting Time I. The Text in Time I.1. New Beginnings I.2. Homer's Pasts I.3. Heracles and the Multitemporal II. Intertexts, Intentions, and Acknowledgement II.1. Metapoetics, Affect, Speculation II.2. Poetry and Philology II.3. Pensiveness II.4. The Life of the Author II.5. Exultation III. Conclusions 2: Untimely Performances I. Thynias: Epiphany, Song, Ritual I.1. Genre and Context I.2. Thematics and Exemplarity I.3. The Poetics of Presence II. The Heliades: Primordial Lament II.1. Primordial Sound II.2. Presence, Empathy, Finitude II.3. Multitemporality III. The Sirens Unheard: Time, Expressivity, Voicing III.1. Situating the Sirens III.2. Allusivity III.3. Soundscape, Meaning, Voice III.4. Voicing Untimeliness III.5. An Ethics of Absorption IV. Conclusions 3: Past Encounters I. A Gathering of Wisdom II. Dipsacus III. Archaeologies of Perception IV. Circe's Beasts, Orpheus' Cosmogony V. Between the Windows of the Sea V.1. Luminously Peopled V.2. The Facts Were Known VI. Reading Rituals VI.1. Dindymum VI.2. Idmon's Tomb VI.3. The Black Rock VI.4. Anaphe VII. The Hesperides VIII. Conclusions 4: Exemplarity, Ethics, Narrative I. Jason's Cloak I.1. Exemplifying Exemplarity I.2. Ecphrasis and the Universal I.3. Picturing Time II. Jason, Medea, and Ariadne II.1. Time Out of Joint II.2. The Colour of Stars II.3. Desire and Reflection II.4. Gesture II.5. Heavy Misfortunes III. Conclusions 5: Imagined Worlds I. Worlds Imagined II. Aeetes III. The Bulls IV. The Earthborn V. The Golden Fleece V.1. A Special Way of Being Afraid V.2. Answerable Style VI. Conclusions 6: Conclusion

This book presents us with an Argonautica that is fresh and different from the poem other critics have described, and it opens up new and promising ways of thinking about this complex work. Although his approach is in many respects formalist, P. goes beyond past formalist studies, and he discusses temporality in a distinctive way that departs from recent historicising readings, to reveal the many ways in which the Argonautica is productively 'untimely'.