Beyond Homer


Book Description

It is 1970, the year of Marc Chagall's famous art exhibit in Paris. Clayton Rogers Clarke, a Virginian, has chosen the city as his place of residence while pursuing research during his first sabbatical. His philosophical interests, however, suffer sudden distraction from an unanticipated competitor: Monique Gibert, a writer for a French daily, for whom her husband (Jacques-Maria) is the senior journalist. Flirtatious quips and nods soon lead to a passionate affair. While dividing his time between Monique and his studies, he meets a fellow PhD, also on sabbatical. Professor Carl Sullivan's field is the Classics, and it is his conviction that humankind has scarcely progressed beyond Homer. Clayton is determined to prove him wrong. Scores of delightful characters in Clarke's pension add intrigue and verve to the story. Wander with Clayton and Monique as they make their way into each other's hearts, while traversing the city's cafŽs and parks that Paris alone affords lovers. And ponder with the young philosopher the age-old question of the human condition. Students of the Classics, of the Humanities and French literature, as well as philosophy, will find the author's synopses of Rousseau and Pascal, and of Homer's gods and heroes, of immense help, along with his translations of Goethe, Rilke, and Baudelaire's poems.




Homer, the Bible, and Beyond


Book Description

An international team of experts discusses the processes of canon-formation in the ancient world, addressing such issues as canon and the articulation of identity; the hermeneutical attitude toward canonical texts; textual fixity and openness; oral and written canons; methods of transmission, and more.




Poetry as Performance


Book Description

To understand the emergence of Homeric poetry as an actual written text, it is essential to trace the history of Homeric performance, from the very beginnings of literacy to the critical era of textual canonisations in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Professor Nagy applies the comparative evidence of oral poetic traditions, including those that survived in literate societies, such as the Provençal troubadour tradition. It appears that a song cannot be fixed as a final written text so long as the oral poetic tradition in which it was created stays alive. So also with Homeric poetry, it is argued that no single definitive text could evolve until the oral traditions in which the epic was grounded became obsolete. In the time of Aristarchus, the gradual movement from relatively fluid to more rigid stages of Homeric transmission reached a near-final point of textualisation.







Homer and the Good Ruler in Antiquity and Beyond


Book Description

Homer and the Good Ruler in Antiquity and Beyond focuses on the important question of how and why later authors employ Homeric poetry to reflect on various types and aspects of leadership. In a range of essays discussing generically diverse receptions of the epics of Homer in historically diverse contexts, this question is answered in various ways. Rather than considering Homer’s works as literary products, then, this volume discusses the pedagogic dimension of the Iliad and the Odyssey as perceived by later thinkers and writers interested in the parameters of good rule, such as Plato, Philodemus, Polybius, Vergil, and Eustathios.




Out of Line


Book Description

He then proposes two levels of analysis: a "deep-structure" level, which describes the associations of words and ideas before they take metrical form, and a "surface-structure" level, which describes the words as they are employed on any particular occasion. Out of Line combines formulaic and metrical analysis, expanding the study of Homeric meter both in practice, by taking into account larger compositional structures such as entire scenes, and in theory, by using the result to test models of formulaic composition.




The Home Beyond


Book Description




Homer's Daughters


Book Description

Charting the reception of Homeric epic in the work of women writers around the globe since 1914, and covering a range of genres and literary and political movements, this volume sheds new light on an understudied facet of Homer's afterlife and on how contemporary women continue to shape the field of classical reception in new and distinctive ways.




Homer, Tragedy and Beyond


Book Description




Beyond the Second Sophistic


Book Description

The “Second Sophistic” traditionally refers to a period at the height of the Roman Empire’s power that witnessed a flourishing of Greek rhetoric and oratory, and since the 19th century it has often been viewed as a defense of Hellenic civilization against the domination of Rome. This book proposes a very different model. Covering popular fiction, poetry and Greco-Jewish material, it argues for a rich, dynamic, and diverse culture, which cannot be reduced to a simple model of continuity. Shining new light on a series of playful, imaginative texts that are left out of the traditional accounts of Greek literature, Whitmarsh models a more adventurous, exploratory approach to later Greek culture. Beyond the Second Sophistic offers not only a new way of looking at Greek literature from 300 BCE onwards, but also a challenge to the Eurocentric, aristocratic constructions placed on the Greek heritage. Accessible and lively, it will appeal to students and scholars of Greek literature and culture, Hellenistic Judaism, world literature, and cultural theory.