Abstract

The thesis explores the structural and thematic relationship between the Prometheus episode and the Theogony of Hesiod. It discusses the Prometheus episode as an example of the genre of trickster tales found also in the Polyphemos and Iros episodes of the Odyssey. ;After setting out the state of the scholarship on the problem of the structural unity of the Theogony, the first chapter argues that the Prometheus episode is central to the core narrative of the poem, the "divine succession struggle". The generic nature of trickster tales is used to clarify how the Prometheus episode is related to the core narrative. It is a liminal episode which moves the divine world from the Kronian mode of imperfect immortality to the Olympian universe divided between a true and fully potent immortality and the newly invented status of mortality. The episode delineates the status of mortality as the negative antipode against which the Olympian regime of Zeus is defined. ;The second chapter analyzes the function of the trickster figure as the quintessential antagonist of the cosmos which Zeus fashions. The trickster is the mythic antithesis to order in general and limits in particular. Zeus as cosmocrat is ultimate orderer and limiter. This chapter analyzes the erkos motif of the Theogony and argues that it is a proto-philosophical anticipation of to periechon. It further argues that the mythic and proto-philosophical components of Hesiod's poem are far more closely interrelated than has previously been recognized. ;The third chapter consists of detailed analysis of the imagery of the divine succession struggle and Prometheus episode which substantiates the claims of the previous chapter. It includes a discussion of the "Sisyphus rhythm" as a mythic figuration of mortality in contrast to the perfected, circular periodicity of the Olympian immortals. ;The fourth chapter analyzes the gaster motif in Hesiod, Homer and archaic poetry. It argues that the gaster defines mortality as a creatural regimen of the flesh in contrast to the aesthetic and quasi-spiritual status of the Olympians. As well, and in conjunction with this, Hesiod's Theogony distinguishes two mental states, one characterized by metis and the other by noos, one typical of the trickster the other of the cosmocrat, one exemplifying mortality, the other immortality