Many-headed song: Configuring the lyric chorus as a group mind

ABSTRACT The Greek chorus is a group of dancers who move and often sing together. Ancient and modern commentators, while acknowledging a capacity for fragmentation, usually emphasize the group’s essential unity; an ideal chorus is a ‘well-fitted’ and harmonious integration of voices and bodies. But how are we to imagine the ‘mind’ of the chorus? Is it singular, or plural? This article will suggest that what philosophers call the Group Mind Thesis (GMT), and related narratological models, may help us to understand the complexities of choral consciousness. The GMT holds that there are collective minds that comprise multiple singular minds; these collective minds are fully equipped with psychological states, processes, and capacities. The lyric chorus, as represented in Homer and on early Greek painted pots, operates on multiple levels, often within the same composition. Focusing on Alcman’s first partheneion (PMGF 1), I show how the chorus acts, thinks, and narrates sometimes as a unit, sometimes as a combination of semichoruses, and sometimes as a collection of individuals in relation to a leader. Such alternative configurations and their attendant tensions are not limited to Alcman; in a final section, I explore how a multi-level group mind might be used to understand the development of dithyramb, and, eventually, drama.