Wait a minute, who are you? How Valerius Flaccus and Statius introduce their epic protagonists

The ‘belated’ nature of Flavian epic is a given. Its characters have already been written many times and their narrative arcs never change. Much scholarly attention over the last few decades has been devoted to unpacking and exploring the allusive literary hinterland of post-Virgilian epic, but this thesis takes a different approach. Offering a ‘slow reading’ approach that focuses on specific ways by which epic protagonists are first brought into their respective stories, I use the Flavian epics of Valerius Flaccus and Statius to model a ‘poetics of introduction’ which pays particular attention to psychological depth, emotional coloring, and inherent narrative uncertainty. These poets introduce their characters, emphasizing their interiority and ambiguity, all while acknowledging the tension that lies between literary tradition and individual identity. By combining narratological analysis with intertextual and emotional approaches, I explain how these poets create protagonists whose identities emerge gradually, rather than being immediately established through clearly stated credentials. In the Argonautica, Jason is revealed to us through his responses to challenging situations, while the proem creates a deliberate ambiguity by withholding any introduction of the epic protagonist. Statius' Achilleid begins with a series of embedded focalizations of Achilles before he appears, creating a multidimensional picture of the character through the different narrators. The Thebaid follows Polynices' development as a character, illustrating how characterization evolves through the political and emotional tensions of this morally compromised world. What my approach reveals, across three case studies, is that the tensions long acknowledged in Flavian scholarship can themselves be read as the mechanisms through which characterization takes place.