Craftsmanship and technology as chorality: the case of weaving imagery in archaic and classical choral lyric

The article explores areas of interaction between weaving (and the related technique of plaiting) and chorality in archaic and classical choral lyric poetry by considering aspects of the craft and technology of weaving as mapped onto the imagery of a performing chorus. The distinctive interplay of aesthetic pleasure, orderly variegation, and harmonious arrangement of parts that choreia displays in literary sources (and that is conveyed in archaic Greek poetry by the notion of ποικιλία) also informs the technology and logic of ancient weaving, a τέχνη largely associated in poetic imagery with both ποικιλία and chorality. Close reading of the relevant passages shows that πλέκειν (including a number of compounds, both verbs and adjectives, from the themes πλεκ-/πλοκ-) is the most conspicuous textile craft term applied by literary sources to song-making and, in particular, to the performance of a dancing chorus, epinician being the song-type that most consistently appropriates the metapoetics of weaving (for matters of generic continuity with PIE imagery and for elements of performance pragmatics, in addition to its status as the most largely attested sub-type of choral lyric). A selective survey of the image of “plaiting a choral dance” is offered, with a focus on the geranos as a particular instance of a dance whose orchestic features may have been interacting with actual textiles: reviving a hypothesis grounded on ethnographic comparison, a possible performance context for the geranos is tentatively proposed.