Rhapsodizing Orpheus

Abstract

Orpheus -we know him as a poet, a musician, and a myth. Yet we must recall that aIl three of these media -poetry, musie, and myth -arise, at some point, out of an act of performance. The last-mentioned, muthas, can in fact be described from Homer on as the very paradigm for performance in archaic Greece: a public utterance that seeks through persuasive means to negotiate authority before a critieal audience. 1 In this connection, it should be worth asking: exactly what sorts of performances originated and transmitted the figure of Orpheu