Nuance, New Historicism and Olympian 6

 

“Nuance” is an idea that at present commands immediate assent; a nuanced reading seems clearly preferable to an un-nuanced one. Yet the call for more nuance is far from transparent, particularly within the context of New Historicist projects: it reflects the continuing influence of New Criticism with its aesthetic preference for contradiction, and, in so far as it is usually a call for a subversive reading, a kind of faith that subversion is always possible and present. Yet we should resist the charms of New Criticism‚s paradoxes and insist that such subversions be themselves historicized; symbols can be subverted, but will only be subverted in specific situations where interests operate upon them that are powerful enough to compel assent. This paper is an attempt to model such a reading. Pindar’s Olympian 6 can be read as both repeating and challenging some fundamental symbolic hierarchies (of gender and class) on which Deinomenid power was founded, but this complexity is rooted in the peculiar position of the poem‚s patron within that power, and should not be expected in every ode.