The Landscape and Language of Korinna
By Daniel W. Berman
Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, Vol. 50 (2010)
Introduction: The poetry of Korinna, who tradition tells us hailed from Tanagra or Thebes, is known for its strong local flavor. Its language is certainly a type of Boiotian dialect, and the content of the poems and fragments that survive is deeply colored by local particulars of all types. The present article is loosely centered around controversies that have long plagued interpretation of her poetry: the question of her date, thought to be either roughly contemporary with Pindar (i.e. late sixth to fifth century) or significantly later, perhaps Hellenistic or at least late fourth century, and the related matter of her homeland: Tanagra or Thebes. I consider here two issues facing an interpreter of Korinna that both, in somewhat similar ways, relate to these problems. The first is one that has not been much discussed by critics, her representation of Boiotian topography. The second, the language of the poems, is more traveled ground. In both cases I hope to shed new light on the central problems of Korinna
