Bardic Temporalities: Performing, Creating, and Contesting Time

This chapter argues that ancient Greek bardic poetry uses performance to shape communal relationships with time, which enables audiences to co-create their shared history and identity. Drawing on theoretical work on performance and improvisation, it explores how both recitations, such as those of Homeric rhapsodes, and improvised agons contribute to the collaborative construction of temporal meaning. It first draws on depictions of the performing poet in Homeric epic to examine how rhapsodic performances create complex relationships between mortal experience of past and present and divine temporal omniscience. Looking then at improvised contests, it explores mythical agons and the literary depiction of poetic competition in the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Through the interplay of improvisation and performance, the poets navigate tensions between divinity and mortality, turning their encounters into acts of ideological, political, and artistic negotiation. The chapter concludes that bardic poetry’s engagement with time extends beyond artistic expression to contest civic and religious identities.