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1
RUIJGH, CORNELIS J. "The source and the structure of Homer's epic poetry." European Review 12, no. 4 (October 2004): 527–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1062798704000456.
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Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were created, probably in the second half of the 9th century BC, in the framework of the Greek epic tradition of oral formulaic poetry, which started in the Peloponnese in proto-Mycenaean times (c. 1600 BC). The epic verse, the dactylic hexameter, must have been taken over from the Minoan Cretans. Whereas most 19th century scholars were analysts, considering Homer's epics' conflations of older and more recent epic poems, most modern scholars are unitarians, recognizing the unity of both epics, thanks to modern insights in the nature of oral traditional poetry and to modern narratology. Although many modern scholars ascribe the Odyssey to a later poet than that of the Iliad, there are no convincing arguments against the Ancients' opinion that both epics are the work of one single poet called Homer. Both Iliad and Odyssey are characterized by the principle of ‘unity of action’, a principle not found in other ancient epic poetry. There are reasons to suppose that Homer learnt the art of epic versification in Smyrna, his native city, by listening to performances of Aeolic singers. Driven by Ionic self-consciousness he transposed the epic Aeolic Kunstsprache into Ionic, thus creating the so-called Homeric dialect. He could perform his monumental epics at great religious festivals and at the courts of princes. There is evidence that he gave performances in the island of Euboea, the only prosperous region of the contemporary Greek world, and that there his epics were eventually written down. Thus, Homer's epics are the end-point of the oral epic tradition and the starting point of written Greek and European literature.
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Nikolaev, Alexander. "The Aorist Infinitives in -EEIN in Early Greek Hexameter Poetry." Journal of Hellenic Studies 133 (2013): 81–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0075426913000050.
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AbstractThis paper examines the distribution of thematic infinitive endings in early Greek epic in the context of the long-standing debate about the transmission and development of Homeric epic diction. There are no aorist infinitives in -έμεν in Homer which would scan as ◡◡ – before a consonant or caesura (for example *βαλέμεν): instead we find unexplained forms in -έειν (for example βαλέειν). It is argued that this artificially ‘distended’ ending -έειν should be viewed as an actual analogical innovation of the poetic language, resulting from a proportional analogy to the ‘liquid’ futures. The total absence of aoristic -έειν in Hesiod is unlikely to be coincidental: the analogical form must have been the product of a specifically East Ionic Kunstsprache, and so could have been simply unknown in some other Ionian school of epic poetry where Hesiod was trained. Finally, the striking avoidance of anapaestic aorist infinitives in -έειν is argued to be explained better under the ‘diffusionist’ approach to the Aeolic elements in Homeric diction than under the ‘Aeolic phase’ theory.
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Duev, Ratko. "The Family of Zeus in Early Greek Poetry and Myths." Classica Cracoviensia 22 (October 29, 2020): 121–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.12797/cc.20.2019.22.05.
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The Family of Zeus in Early Greek Poetry and Myths
In early epic poetry it is evident that certain differences exist in both traditions, mainly due to the fact that Homer’s epic poems were written on the western coast of Asia Minor and the surrounding islands, while Hesiod’s poems were composed on mainland Greece. From the analysis, it becomes clear that the development of the cult of an Indo-European Sky Father differs significantly from the assumed Proto-Indo-European tradition. His family is completely different from that in the Indo-European tradition. His wife is the goddess Hera, whom Homer calls ‘old’, as opposed to the Hesiodic tradition, in which Hestia and Demeter are older than her. Homer makes no mention whatsoever of Hestia. The ‘daughters of Zeus’ are the goddesses Athena and Aphrodite, and the ‘son of Zeus’ is Apollo. The family of Zeus according to Homer also differs from the archaeological findings of the tradition on land. Hera of Samos bears no resemblance to Hera of Argos. The oldest large temples are connected to her, as well as to the memory of Oceanus and Thetis as parents to the gods, which is a direct influence of the Mesopotamian myths of Apsu and Tiamat. Homer’s Zeus from Mount Ida, Hera of Samos, Apollo of Cilla, and Tenedus and Artemis of Ephesus are closer to the Anatolian tradition.
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Padel, Ruth. "Homer's Reader: A reading of George Seferis." Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 31 (1985): 74–132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0068673500004764.
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The reader I have in mind is a poet. My immediate interest is the example he provides of a writer's relationship with her or his reading. My aim is double: to suggest both that Homer illuminates the work of the later poet and that the later poetry can function as an interpretation of Homer which offers even to a scholar valuable ways of reading the epics, especially the Odyssey. Accordingly, I shall usually offer translations both of the modern and of the ancient Greek, since not all classicists know modern Greek intimately and those who study modern Greek do not always know the ancient language well.Let us begin by reading one of Seferis' best-known poems. He wrote it in the Thirties and many contemporary poetic influences, both French and English, are at work in it. But I want to read it now from a special perspective, which I shall argue was crucial to Seferis through all his work. I shall read it as a search for a significant but bearable relationship in his own poetry with Homer and, through Homer, with the whole ancient poetic tradition.
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O’Connell, Peter A. "Homer and his Legacy in Gregory of Nazianzus’ ‘On his own Affairs’." Journal of Hellenic Studies 139 (September 20, 2019): 147–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0075426919000673.
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AbstractThis paper investigates how Gregory of Nazianzus imitates and responds to the Greek literary tradition in the autobiographical poem ‘On his own affairs’ (2.1.1). Through six case studies, it contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of Gregory’s literary merit. With learning, wit, subtle humour and faith, Gregory adapts and reinvents earlier poetry to express Christian themes. Imitation is at the heart of his poetic technique, but his imitations are never straight-forward. They include imitating both Homer and other poets’ imitations of Homer, learned word-play and combining references to non-Christian literature and the Septuagint. Gregory’s references add nuance to ‘On his own affairs’ and give pleasure to readers trained to judge poetry by comparing it to earlier poetry, especially the Homeric epics. They also demonstrate the breadth of his scholarship, which extends to Homeric variants, Platonic epigrams and the entirety of the New Testament and Septuagint. Above all, Gregory insists that he is a rightful participant in a living poetic tradition. He writes Greek poetry for the fourth century AD, just as Oppian did in the second century and Apollonius and Callimachus did in the Hellenistic period.
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Gagné, Renaud. "The Poetics of exôleia in Homer." Mnemosyne 63, no. 3 (2010): 353–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852510x456156.
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AbstractThe notion of delayed generational punishment, or ancestral fault, has a long history in Greek literature. The identification of its earliest attestations in the Archaic period is contested, especially its presence in Homeric poetry. This paper aims to show that delayed generational punishment does indeed appear in Homer, where it is, however, confined to one context: the great oath of exôleia of Iliad 3.298-301 and 4.155-65. The institutional and ritual context of the generational oath is essential to understanding this earliest Greek attestation of ancestral fault, and making sense of the idea’s larger significance for narrative perspective, divine justice, and temporal order in the Homeric epic.
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Ferdous, Mafruha. "Reading Homer’s The Iliad in 21st Century." Advances in Language and Literary Studies 8, no. 2 (April 30, 2017): 101. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.2p.101.
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Homer's Iliad refers to an epic story written by the ancient Greek poet Homer, which makes an account of the most significant events that earmarked the very last days which defined the Trojan War and the Greek siege of the city of Troy. Troy was also known as Ilium, Ilion, or Ilois in the past. Having made to center around the events of the Trojan War, Homer’s Iliad is a work of art that paints to all of us interested in literature, what really happened in the past. The paper purposes to provide invaluable insights regarding the significance of Homer’s Iliad today and what it teaches us about poetry and the ancient culture of the Greeks.
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Sifakis, G. M. "Formulas and their relatives: a semiotic approach to verse making in Homer and modern greek folksongs." Journal of Hellenic Studies 117 (November 1997): 136–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/632553.
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In a book I published a few years ago, entitledTowards a Poetics of Modern Greek Folksong, I examined certain aspects of the poetics of modern folksongs in the light of the ‘oral composition theory’ of Homeric poetry, originally expounded by Milman Parry in the late twenties and early thirties and subsequently elaborated by Albert B. Lord. In this paper I propose to follow the opposite course, and inquire whether some of my findings regarding the verse-making techniques of the modern folksongs could be applied to the Homeric epics, and whether they could be made to cast some additional light on the making of ancient epic poetry. More specifically, in my study of formular and otherwise similar verses in the folksongs, I was able to distinguish five degrees of kinship, as it were, or of decreasing similarity, from identical formulas to sense units of similar type. Can a comparable scale of similarities be found in Homer, and, if it can, could it be used in modern discussions of ancient epic versification and composition, without further encumbering a terminology that is not always clear or generally agreed upon? The purpose of this exercise is not merely taxonomic; by using some basic concepts of structural linguistics as tools, I think we may perhaps come a little closer to understanding the verse-making process, which is a prerequisite for understanding Homer's manner of composition and, in the last analysis, his ‘creativity’ or even ‘originality’ vis à vis the tradition to which he belonged.
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Horsfall, Nicholas. "Virgil and The Poetry of Explanations." Greece and Rome 38, no. 2 (October 1991): 203–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500023585.
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The indebtedness of theAeneidto Homer in terms of plot and structure has been analysed in minute detail, and the hunt is indeed by no means at an end. Here and there, notably but not exclusively inAeneid4, long narrative sequences have been followed back to Apollonius Rhodius. Isolated episodes have been identified as owing much to Greek tragedy. But the pursuit of Virgil's principal narrative sources, already undertaken with furious critical acerbity in antiquity, is perhaps too heavily committed to a limited quantity of likely literary models and to certain patterns of enquiry, though these last have changed a good deal in recent years. If I seem to grumble about a narrowness of outlook that becomes at times oppressive and about the danger of conclusions ever more forced and improbable if we continue barking up the same few trees, it is because (i) I have worked on and off for nearly twenty-five years onAeneid7, where Virgil's sources are as mixed, complex and anomalous as they ever become and because (ii) I published recently a study (Vergilius35 (1989), 8–27) of narrative sequences inAeneid, which seemed to point strongly towards Virgil's attentive reading of Greek colonization stories. This is not the place to continue my one-man pursuit of Herodotus and Pindar in theAeneid?but it is high time that we looked at certain large narrative structures in the epic and asked whether we have really been framing the right questions about them.
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Franek, Juraj. "Invocations of the Muse in Homer and Hesiod: A Cognitive Approach." Antichthon 52 (2018): 1–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ann.2018.8.
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AbstractIn this paper, I offer a cognitive analysis of the invocations of the Muse in earliest Greek epic poetry that is based on recent advances in cognitive science in general and the cognitive science of religion in particular. I argue that the Muse-concept most likely originated in a feeling of dependence on an external source of information to provide the singer with the subject matter of their song. This source of information is conceptualised as an ontological type (or template) ‘person’ by means of the hyperactive agency detection, and the Muse’s full access to strategic information, along with other characteristics, establishes her as a minimally counter-intuitive concept (that is to say a concept that conforms to most of our intuitive expectations and runs counter to a few of them), which, in turn, significantly increases the probability of the acquisition and transmission of the Muse-concept within the culture.
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Yasin, Ghulam, Shaukat Ali, and Kashif Shahzad. "Resonances of greek-latin classics in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky: a critical analysis." Acta Scientiarum. Language and Culture 43, no. 1 (April 8, 2021): e55354. http://dx.doi.org/10.4025/actascilangcult.v43i1.55354.
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This research aims to probe the classical elements in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and to show the author’s bent towards the classical authors and traditions. Dostoevsky is the giant literary figure of 19th-century Russian literature and he belongs not only to a particular time but to all times like many other great classic writers. The research is significant for exposing the author’s affiliation towards the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod and the dramas of the preeminent Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Dostoevsky also becomes classic based on his dealings with the themes dealt by the classics like love, fight for honour, real-life presentation, the conflict between vice and virtue and the struggle of his tragic heroes to reach their goal. The research proves that Dostoevsky is a classic among the classics because of having close resonance with the classics in the art of characterization, the portrayal of tragic heroes, theme building and by including some elements of tragedy. The qualitative research is designed on the descriptive-analytic method by using the approach of Classicism presented by Mark Twain.
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O'Sullivan, Patrick, and Judith Maitland. "Greek and Latin Teaching in Australian and New Zealand Universities: A 2005 Survey." Antichthon 41 (2007): 109–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0066477400001787.
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The study of Latin and Ancient Greek at tertiary level is crucial for the survival of Classics within the university sector. And it is not too much to say that the serious study of Greco-Roman antiquity in most, if not all, areas is simply impossible without the ancient languages. They are essential not just for the broad cross-section of philological and literary studies in poetry and prose (ranging at least from Homer to the works of the Church Fathers to Byzantine Chroniclers) but also for ancient history and historiography, philosophy, art history and aesthetics, epigraphy, and many branches of archaeology. In many Classics departments in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, enrolments in non-language subjects such as myth, ancient theatre or epic, or history remain healthy and cater to a broad public interest in the ancient Greco-Roman world. This is, of course, to be lauded. But the status of the ancient languages, at least in terms of enrolments, may often seem precarious compared to the more overtly popular courses taught in translation. Given the centrality of the ancient languages to our discipline as a whole, it is worth keeping an eye on how they are faring to ensure their prosperity and longevity.
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Fox, R. J. Lane. "Theophrastus'Charactersand the historian." Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 42 (1997): 127–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0068673500002078.
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In a programmatic article, published nearly twenty years ago, Peter Laslett characterized historians who try to write social history from literature as people who look at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. His particular examples of their inverted gaze were not always well chosen: warfare in Homer, the young age at betrothal of Shakespeare's Juliet, the extra-marital affairs in Restoration Comedy. The main point, however, still challenges ancient historians. ‘The great defect of the evidence’, as A. H. M. Jones forewarned readers of his social history, ‘is the total absence of statistics’: at best, we have isolated numbers which do not survive in significant sequences. Yet since 1951, ancient historians have continued to look down their telescopes and find social history in a widening range of texts. In the past decade, Roman historians have re-read prose fictions for this purpose, while on the Greek side, more recent attention has gone to poetry, especially tragedy and Homeric epic.
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Heath, Malcolm. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 64, no. 1 (March 14, 2017): 65–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383516000243.
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Mary Bachvarova's large, complex and ambitious From Hittite to Homer argues for long-distance interactions linking the Near East to Anatolia to Greece, and constructs a model of ‘why, how, and when’ (198) those interactions operated. The general thesis is not seriously in doubt, and much of the model's detail seems plausible; but since that is beyond my competence to judge, I will stick to my remit as Greek literature reviewer and focus on what the model, if right in detail, might tell us about Greek narrative poetry. How useful is Bachvarova's speculative literary prehistory, and what is it useful for? Can it illuminate the texts we have? Referential ambiguities expose one problem. The claim that ‘the overarching plot and theme of the Odyssey speak to the values of the warrior-traders that motivated the spread of Near Eastern epic motifs’ (296) is startling: Odysseus never engages in trade; indeed, to call him a trader is a calculated insult (Od. 8.159–64). It emerges a few pages later that the reference is not to the Odyssey, but to a hypothetical original: ‘The Odyssey may have originally addressed the values of heroic trade…but as the values of the Greek aristocratic class changed and trade was viewed more negatively, the role of the hero would have lost its trader aspects’ (298). I'm not sure whether this explanation also applies to (e.g.) ‘Agamemnon rejects the interpretation of his seer, refusing to release Chryseis’ (193) or ‘it has become clear to Achilles that the gods’ intervention, the advice to avoid battle…has been at the cost of his own life’ (194). Contrast the extant Iliad, in which Agamemnon agrees to release Chryseis (1.116–17) and Achilles withdraws on his own initiative (1.169–71). These may just be inaccurate recollections of ‘the supremely sophisticated and complex works that are known to us’ (396). But to the extent that Bachvarova's interpretation of extant texts is skewed by her speculative literary prehistory, or her reconstruction of lost texts is shaped by it, the parallels are not evidence for the hypothesis but artefacts of it. Parallels per se are not, in any case, sufficient evidence of influence: Mesoamerican pyramids were not derived from Egypt. Yet Bachvarova's opening sentences jump directly from parallels to the how and why of influence (1). Is ‘negative reaction to speech’ (44) so distinctive a cultural phenomenon as to make its appearance in different narrative traditions evidence of influence? If parallels between hospitality narratives (142–5) reflect cognate hospitality cultures, why should we appeal to transmission by song to explain them? The similarities between Naram-Sin and Hector (191–5) could originate independently in any two cultures which regarded divination as a source of good advice if (as is likely) they had noticed that leaders sometimes fail to accept good advice. This is a stimulating book; but Bachvarova's approach to diagnosing influence lacks the methodological rigour of Christopher Metcalf's The Gods Rich in Praise (G&R 63 [2016], 251).
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YOSE, JOSEPH, RALPH KENNA, PÁDRAIG MacCARRON, THIERRY PLATINI, and JUSTIN TONRA. "A NETWORKS-SCIENCE INVESTIGATION INTO THE EPIC POEMS OF OSSIAN." Advances in Complex Systems 19, no. 04n05 (June 2016): 1650008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0219525916500089.
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In 1760 James Macpherson published the first volume of a series of epic poems which he claimed to have translated into English from ancient Scottish-Gaelic sources. The poems, which purported to have been composed by a third-century bard named Ossian, quickly achieved wide international acclaim. They invited comparisons with major works of the epic tradition, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and effected a profound influence on the emergent Romantic period in literature and the arts. However, the work also provoked one of the most famous literary controversies of all time, coloring the reception of the poetry to this day. The authenticity of the poems was questioned by some scholars, while others protested that they misappropriated material from Irish mythological sources. Recent years have seen a growing critical interest in Ossian, initiated by revisionist and counter-revisionist scholarship and by the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the first collected edition of the poems in 1765. Here, we investigate Ossian from a networks-science point of view. We compare the connectivity structures underlying the societies described in the Ossianic narratives with those of ancient Greek and Irish sources. Despite attempts, from the outset, to position Ossian alongside the Homeric epics and to distance it from Irish sources, our results indicate significant network-structural differences between Macpherson’s text and those of Homer. They also show a strong similarity between Ossianic networks and those of the narratives known as Acallam na Senórach (Colloquy of the Ancients) from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.
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Hart, Jonathan Locke. "Aesthetics and Ethics Intertwined: Fictional and Non-Fictional Worlds." Interlitteraria 22, no. 2 (January 16, 2018): 236. http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/il.2017.22.2.3.
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Montaigne and Las Casas are important thinkers and writers, as are many others, including Shakespeare, as a poet, whose work is complex enough in its modernity that it would be hard to condemn him as a poet as Plato did Homer. Aristotle analyzed Greek tragedy to see how it worked in terms of a framework of anagnorisis and catharsis, that is, recognition and the purging of pity and terror. Shakespeare revisits and reshapes Homer in Troilus and Cressida and remakes Plutarch in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra while playing on the classical epic and mythological themes in Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. Plato, a poet as well as a philosopher, and a great writer if one does not like those categories, may have feared the poet within himself. Although assuming with Plato that philosophy is more universal and just than poetry, Aristotle takes the analysis of poetry and drama seriously in Poetics, and also discusses ethics, aesthetics and style in Rhetoric. So, while I discuss Plato as a framework, I am not presuming that writing on the relations among the good, the true, the just and the beautiful stop with him. I am also making the assumption that Las Casas, Montaigne, Shakespeare and other poets and writers deserve to be taken seriously in the company of Plato. Las Casas and Montaigne respond to radically changing realities and shake the very basis of traditional ethics (especially in understanding of the “other”) and work in harmony with the greatest poets and writers of a new era often called modernity like Shakespeare, who is in the good company of Manrique, Villon, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Juan de la Cruz, Luis de León, Lope de Vega, Quevedo and Calderón. Long before, Dante and Petrarch were exploring in their poetry ethical and aesthetic imperatives and broke new ground doing so. Nor can Las Casas and Montaigne be separated from other great writers like Rabelais and Cervantes, who carry deep philosophical and ethical sensibility in their work while responding to reality by providing aesthetically – even sensuously – shaped images that always leave a margin for ambiguity because conflicts are part of an ambiguous reality.
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Roy, Sydnor. "HOMERIC CONCERNS: A METAPOETIC READING OF LUCRETIUS, DE RERUM NATURA 2.1–19." Classical Quarterly 63, no. 2 (November 8, 2013): 780–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009838813000256.
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Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventise terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas,sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri 5per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli.sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenereedita doctrina sapientum templa serena,despicere unde queas alios passimque videreerrare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, 10certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,noctes atque dies niti praestante laboread summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.o miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca!qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis 15degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest! nonne viderenil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi utquicorpore seiunctus dolor absit, mensque fruaturiucundo sensu cura semota metuque?(Lucr. 2.1–19)It is pleasant, when the winds stir up the waters on the great sea,to watch the great struggle of another from land;not because it is a great pleasure that anyone be troubled,but because it is pleasant to observe the troubles you yourself lack.It is also pleasant to watch the great contests of war 5spread out over the plains without taking any part in the danger.But nothing is more pleasing than to hold lofty yet calm templesthat are well defended by the teachings of wise men,from which you can look down and see others everywherego astray and wander while seeking the path of their life, 10competing in wits and contending over their nobility;throughout nights and days they strive with outstanding labourto come out at the peak of riches and have power over everything.O wretched minds of men, O blind hearts!In what shadows of life and in how many dangers 15is this bit of life, whatever it may be, being spent by you! Do you not seethat nature barks for nothing other than this – thatgrief be separated from the body and far away, and that the mind enjoypleasant feelings cut off from anxiety and fear? Epicurus' advice to his young friend Pythocles to ‘flee all education, raising up the top sail’ (παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, ϕεῦγε τἀκάτιον ἀράμενος, Diog.Laert. 10.6 = Epicurus fr. 163 Us.) contains an allusion to Circe's advice to Odysseus in Odyssey 12.37–58. For much of the Greek (and Roman) world, education was based on the Homeric epics, and thus Epicurus' statement represents a complicated position towards Homer in particular and poetry in general. Epicurean philosophy rejects poetry because it is misleading about the gods and the nature of the soul, but Epicurus and his followers, most notably Philodemus and Lucretius, engage in poetic allusion and even the composition of poetry. Much work has been done on allusions to poetry in all three writers, but I hope here to bring out a heretofore unnoticed poetic allusion at the start of De rerum natura Book 2, in which Lucretius makes a programmatic statement about not only his philosophy, but also his poetry and its place in the poetic tradition.
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Mitevski, Vitomir. "The Influence of Ancient Greek Culture on Macedonian Literature of the 19th Century." Colloquia Humanistica, no. 1 (July 22, 2015): 19–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.11649/ch.2012.002.
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The Influence of Ancient Greek Culture on Macedonian Literature of the 19th CenturyIn Macedonia under the Ottoman rule during the nineteenth century, the Macedonian people-the nation is subject to political pressure and the cultural influence of Turkey and other countries. Under the influence of propaganda leading by Athens and education politics in the area of contemporary Republic of Macedonia, some Macedonian militant intellectuals embraced, at the same time, were influenced by romanticism and the Old-Greek culture, which strongly affect their literary works. In this context, two authors are viewed as the most significant-Jordan Hadji Murad Konstantinov Džinot and Grigor Prlichev. Džinot is the author of dramatized dialogue inspired by the classic Greek mythology, at the school, where he is a teacher. On the pages of the press he announces the publication of its ancient-themed dramas, however, for unknown reasons, none of them does not appear in print. Prlichev well knew the Old-Greek and is an admirer of the works of Homer. Influenced by the poetry of Homer writes in an epic poem in the archaized Greek. Wpływ starogreckiej kultury na literaturę macedońską w XIX wiekuW ramach imperium osmańskiego, którego częścią jest Macedonia w ciągu XIX wieku, macedoński lud-naród podlega politycznej presji i wpływom kulturowym ze strony Turcji i innych państw. Pod wpływem propagandy, którą prowadzą Ateny i która wyraża się m.in. w zakładaniu swoich szkół w Macedonii, niektórzy macedońscy intelektualiści, ogarnięci w tym samym czasie wpływami romantyzmu poznają kulturę starogrecką, co silnie wpłynie na ich twórczość literacką. W tym kontekście wybijają się dwie najbardziej znaczące postaci – Jordan Hadži Konstantinov-Džinot i Grigor Prličev. Džinot jest autorem dramatyzowanych dialogów inspirowanych klasyczną, starogrecką mitologią, wystawianych w szkole, w której sam jest nauczycielem. Na łamach prasy zapowiada publikację swoich dramatów o tematyce antycznej, jednak z niewiadomych przyczyn żaden z nich nie pojawia się w druku. Prličev dobrze zna starogrecki i jest znawcą twórczości Homera. Pod wpływem poezji Homera pisze w archaizowanym języku greckim poemat epicki zatytułowany ‛Ο 'Aρματωλός (w macedońskim przekładzie Сердарот albo Мартолозот), który przynosi mu zwycięstwo w konkursie poetyckim w Atenach w 1860 roku. Jego drugie dzieło epickie zatytułowane Σκενδέρμπεης jest napisane także w duchu poezji Homera, głównie jeśli chodzi o styl (epitety i porównania) i kompozycję (opracowanie typowych dla eposu motywów tematycznych). Obydwaj są także tłumaczami, Džinot zapowiada w prasie przekład Antygony Sofoklesa, o losach przekładu nic nam nie wiadomo, a Prličev dokonuje poetyckiego przekładu Iliady Homera na wymyślony przez siebie język, który jest w istocie mieszanką języków słowiańskich, a sam autor nazywa go "ogólnosłowiańskim". Влијанието на старогрчката култура врз македонската литература во XIX–иот векВо рамките на Турската Империја од која Македонија е дел во текот на 19-иот, македонскиот народ е изложен на политичка пресија и културното влијание и на Турција и на некои соседни држави. Под влијание на пропагандата на владата во Атина која отвора свои школи во Македонија, а во исто време и зафатени од бранот на романтизам, некои македонски интелектуалци се запознаваат со старогрчката култура што ќе остави силен печат врз нивното литературно творештво. Во тој поглед се издвојуваат две најзначајни имиња – Јордан Хаџи Константинов Џинот и Григор Прличев.Џинот се јавува со драмски дијалози инспирирани од класичната старогрчка митологија кои се изведуваат на приредбите во школите во кои тој е учител, а во печатот најавува објавување на свои драми со античка тематика кои, од непознати причини, не се појавиле.Прличев е добро образован во старогрчкиот јазик и особено добар познавач на Хомер. Под влијание на хомерската поезија, тој пишува на еден архаизиран грчки јазик епска поема под наслов ‛Ο ’Aρματωλός (во македонски превод Серадот или Мартолозот) и со неа победува на поетскиот конкурс во Атина 1860 година.Второто негово епско дело под наслов Σκενδέρμπεης исто така е напишано во духот на хомерската поезија и тоа се гледа главно во областа на стилот (епитети и споредби) и во композицијата (обработка на типични епски теми). На преведувачки план, Џинот најавува во печатот превод на трагедијата Антигона од Софокле, дело чија судбина исто така не ни е позната, а Прличев пишува препев на Хомеровата Илијада на еден посебен јазик кој претставува смеса од словенските јазици, а самиот автор го нарекува „општословенски“.
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Lipka, Michael. "Aretalogical Poetry: A Forgotten Genre of Greek Literature." Philologus 162, no. 2 (October 25, 2018): 208–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/phil-2018-0005.
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AbstractThe article deals with a hitherto largely neglected group of poetic texts that is characterized by the representation of the vicissitudes and deeds of a single hero (or god) through a third-person omniscient authorial voice, henceforth called ‘aretalogical poetry’. I want to demonstrate that in terms of form, contents, intertextual ‘self-awareness’ and long-term influence, aretalogical poetry qualifies as a fully-fledged epic genre comparable to bucolic or didactic poetry. In order not to blur my argument, I will focus on heroic aretalogies, and on Heracleids and Theseids in particular, because of their prominence in the minds of ancient literary critics. In the case of Heraclean aretalogies, it is expedient to distinguish further between aretalogies of ‘epic’ and ‘lyric epic’ (i.e. lyric poets such as Stesichorus, who writes ‘epic’ aretalogies).
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Bowie, Ewen L. "Greek Table-Talk before Plato." Rhetorica 11, no. 4 (1993): 355–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rh.1993.11.4.355.
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Abstract: This essay analyses conversation at archaic and classical Greek banquets and symposia, using first epic, then elegiac and lyric poetry, and finally Old Comedy. Epic offers few topics, mostiy arising from the situation of a guest. Those of sympotic poetry, from which prose exchanges may cautiously be inferred, are more numerous:reflection, praise of the living and the dead, consolation of the bereaved, proclamations of likes and dislikes, declarations of love,narrative of one's own erotic experiences or (scandalously) of others',personal criticism and abuse, and the telling of fables. Many of these verbal interventions are competitive. Comedy reinforces the prevalence of an ethos of entertainment, corroborating the telling of fables and adding creditable anecdotes about one's career, singing skolia,and playing games of "comparisons" and riddles.
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Spivey, Nigel. "Art and Archaeology." Greece and Rome 61, no. 2 (September 12, 2014): 287–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383514000138.
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Whatever Luca Giuliani writes is usually worth reading. Image and Myth, a translation and revision of his Bild und Mythos (Munich, 2003), is no exception. This monograph engages with a topic germane to the origins and development of classical archaeology – the relation of art to text. Giuliani begins, rather ponderously, with an exposition of G. E. Lessing's 1766 essay Laokoon, ‘on the limits of painting and poetry’. Lessing, a dramatist, predictably considered poetry the more effective medium for conveying a story. A picture, in his eyes, encapsulates the vision of a moment – likewise a statue. The Laocoon group, then, is a past perfect moment. A poet can provide the beginning, middle, and end of a story; the artist, only the representation of a fleeting appearance. Giuliani shows that this distinction does not necessarily hold – works of art can be synoptic, disobedient of Aristotelian laws about unity of place and time (and scale). Yet he extracts from Lessing's essay a basic dichotomy between the narrative and the descriptive. This dichotomy dictates the course of a study that is most illuminating when its author is being neither narrative nor descriptive but analytical – explaining, with commendable care for detail, what we see in an ancient work of art. But is the distinction between narrative and descriptive as useful as Giuliani wants it to be? One intellectual predecessor, Carl Robert, is scarcely acknowledged, and a former mentor, Karl Schefold, is openly repudiated; both of these leave-takings are consequent from the effort on Giuliani's part to avoid seeking (and finding) ‘Homeric’ imagery in early Greek art. The iconography of Geometric vases, he maintains, ‘is devoid of narrative intention: it refers to what can be expected to take place in the world’ (37). In this period, we should not be asking whether an image is ‘compatible’ with a story, but rather whether it is incomprehensible without a story. If the answer is ‘no’, then the image is descriptive, not narrative. Thus the well-known oinochoe in Munich, clearly showing a shipwreck, and arguably intending to represent a single figure astride an overturned keel, need not be read as a visual allusion to Odyssey 12.403–25, or some version of the tale of Odysseus surviving a shipwreck. It is just one of those things that happens in the world. Well, we may be thinking – let us be glad that it happens less frequently these days, but double our travel insurance nevertheless. As Giuliani commits himself to this approach, he is forced to concede that certain Geometric scenes evoke the ‘heroic lifestyle’ – but, since we cannot admit Homer's heroes, we must accept the existence of the ‘everyman aristocrat’ (or aristocratic everyman: either way, risking oxymoron). Readers may wonder if Lessing's insistence on separating the descriptive from the narrative works at all well for Homer as an author: for does not Homer's particular gift lie in adding graphic, descriptive detail to his narrative? And have we not learned (from Barthes and others) that ‘descriptions’, semiotically analysed, carry narrative implications – implications for what precedes and follows the ‘moment’ described? So the early part of Giuliani's argument is not persuasive. His conviction, and convincing quality, grows as artists become literate, and play a ‘new game’ ‘in the context of aristocratic conviviality’ (87) – that of adding names to figures (as on the François Vase). Some might say this was simply a literate version of the old game: in any case, it also includes the possibility of ‘artistic licence’. So when Giuliani notes, ‘again we find an element here that is difficult to reconcile with the epic narrative’ (149), this does not, thankfully, oblige him to dismiss the link between art and text, or art and myth (canonical or not). Evidently a painter such as Kleitias could heed the Muses, or aspire to be inspired; a painter might also enjoy teasing his patrons with ‘tweaks’ and corrigenda to a poet's work. (The latter must have been the motive of Euphronios, when representing the salvage of the body of Sarpedon as overseen by Hermes, rather than by Apollo, divergent from the Homeric text.) Eventually there will be ‘pictures for readers’, and a ‘pull of text’ that is overt in Hellenistic relief-moulded bowls, allowing Giuliani to talk of ‘illustrations’ – images that ‘have surrendered their autonomy’ (252).
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Fernández-Delgado, José-Antonio. "Greek Genealogical Epic: Vitality of Its Formulaic Diction." AION (filol.) Annali dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” 41, no. 1 (December 20, 2019): 1–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/17246172-40010011.
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Abstract One aspect of the Greek epic that has yet to be thoroughly explored is the possibility of differentiating, in the midst of formulaic wording, the different genres that from the point of view of Greek literature comprise, for example, the telling of heroic deeds (Iliad, Odyssey), gnomic-paraenetic poetry (Works and Days), or the stories of genealogies, be they divine (Theogony), or heroic (Ehoiai). However, each of these forms of poetic expression had available a specific formulaic apparatus apart from the other much more abundant and more visible, the epic one, shared among the different genres. Thus has it been pointed out on some occasions, although the critics have scarcely pursued the consequences. Here my proposal consists of investigating the dynamics of the formulaic diction of oral poetry of the genealogical type, based on information provided in this regard by the Hesiodic poems of the Theogony, and above all, of the Catalogue of Women.
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Donlan, Walter, and William G. Thalmann. "Conventions of Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry." Classical World 79, no. 5 (1986): 340. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4349911.
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Fowler, R. L., and William G. Thalmann. "Conventions of Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry." Phoenix 40, no. 2 (1986): 206. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1088516.
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Thalmann, William G., and Richard Garner. "From Homer to Tragedy: The Art of Allusion in Greek Poetry." Classical World 84, no. 5 (1991): 412. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4350884.
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Carnes, Jeffrey S., and Richard Garner. "From Homer to Tragedy: The Art of Allusion in Greek Poetry." American Journal of Philology 113, no. 3 (1992): 446. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/295466.
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Gostoli, Antonietta. "Τὸ καλόν as a Criterion for Judging Innovation (τὸ καινόν) in Greek Musical Pedagogy." Greek and Roman Musical Studies 7, no. 1 (March 21, 2019): 21–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22129758-12341332.
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Abstract The Pseudo-Plutarchan De musica provides us with the oldest history of Greek lyric poetry from pre-Homeric epic poetry to the lyric poetry of the fourth century BC. Importantly, the work also contains an evaluation of the role of music in the process of educating and training citizens. Pseudo-Plutarch (Aristoxenus) considers the καλόν in the aesthetic and ethical sense, which makes it incompatible with the καινόν dictated by the new poetic and musical season.
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DEN BOER, PIM. "Homer in Modern Europe." European Review 15, no. 2 (April 4, 2007): 171–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1062798707000191.
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Homer is considered the father of poetry in European culture, but the written Greek text of the Iliad and the Odyssey was for ages not available in modern Europe, and knowledge of Greek was almost completely lost. Homer entered European classrooms during the 19th century. The popularity of the Iliad and the Odyssey coincided with the creation of modern educational systems in European empires and nation-states. At the end of the 19th century Homer was considered perfect reading material for the formation of the future elite of the British Empire. In the course of the 20th century teachers and pedagogues became increasingly accustomed to perceive Homer and his society as totally different from our times. All reading of Homer is contemporary reading.
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Ballesteros, Bernardo. "ON GILGAMESH AND HOMER: ISHTAR, APHRODITE AND THE MEANING OF A PARALLEL." Classical Quarterly 71, no. 1 (May 2021): 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009838821000513.
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AbstractThis article reconsiders the similarities between Aphrodite's ascent to Olympus and Ishtar's ascent to heaven in Iliad Book 5 and the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Tablet VI respectively. The widely accepted hypothesis of an Iliadic reception of the Mesopotamian poem is questioned, and the consonance explained as part of a vast stream of tradition encompassing ancient Near Eastern and early Greek narrative poetry. Compositional and conceptual patterns common to the two scenes are first analyzed in a broader early Greek context, and then across further Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic and Hurro-Hittite sources. The shared compositional techniques at work in Mesopotamia and the Eastern Mediterranean can be seen as a function of the largely performative nature of narrative poetry. This contributes to explaining literary transmission within the Near East and onto Greece.
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Gostoli, Antonietta. "Τὸ καλόν as a Criterion for Evaluating Innovation (τὸ καινόν) in Greek Theory of Musical Education: “Ancient” versus “New” Music in Ps. Plut. De musica." Peitho. Examina Antiqua 8, no. 1 (October 24, 2017): 379–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/pea.2017.1.24.
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The Pseudo-Plutarchan De musica provides us with the oldest history of Greek lyric poetry from the pre-Homeric epic poetry to the lyric poetry of the fourth century B.C. Importantly, the work contains also an evaluation of the role of music in the process of educating and training the citizens. Ps. Plutarch (Aristoxenus) considers the καλόν in the aesthetic and ethical sense, which makes it incompatible with the καινόν dictated by the new poetic and musical season.
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Gostoli, Antonietta. "Τὸ καλόν as a Criterion for Evaluating Innovation (τὸ καινόν) in Greek Theory of Musical Education: “Ancient” versus “New” Music in Ps. Plut. De musica." Peitho. Examina Antiqua, no. 1(8) (October 24, 2017): 379–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/peitho.2017.12238.
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The Pseudo-Plutarchan De musica provides us with the oldest history of Greek lyric poetry from the pre-Homeric epic poetry to the lyric poetry of the fourth century B.C. Importantly, the work contains also an evaluation of the role of music in the process of educating and training the citizens. Ps. Plutarch (Aristoxenus) considers the καλόν in the aesthetic and ethical sense, which makes it incompatible with the καινόν dictated by the new poetic and musical season.
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Park, Jongseong. "WHAT IS AN ORAL HEROIC EPIC POETRY? – OVERCOMING THE LIMIT OF THE ILIAD." International Journal of Korean Humanities and Social Sciences 5 (February 28, 2020): 57–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/kr.2019.05.04.
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The ancient Greek epic Iliad, including the oral epic and the written epic, has enjoyed a solid status as a ‘heroic epic’ (or ‘narrative poetry’) of European literature. But if a reader takes look at the general aspects of the heroic epic of oral tradition, it turns out that Iliad is not a typical work of a typical epic, but rather an individual one. Because the birth, trials, performance, and ending of a hero’s life are divided relatively evenly, and the general pattern of transferring the hero’s life to the heroic epic of oral tradition can be found in such cases as Manas, Jangar, Gesar and Mwindo.
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Pormann, Peter E. "Greek Thought, Modern Arabic Culture: Classical Receptions since the Nahḍa." Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 3, no. 1-2 (2015): 291–315. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-00301011.
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This article surveys the growing, yet largely understudied field of classical receptions in the modern Arab world, with a specific focus on Egypt and the Levant. After giving a short account of the state of the field and reviewing a small number of previous studies, the article discusses how classical studies as a discipline fared in Egypt; and how this discipline informed modern debates about religous identity, and notably views on the textual history of the Qurʾān. It then turns to three literary genres, epic poetry, drama, and lyrical poetry, and explores the reception of classical literature and myth in each of them. It concludes with an appeal to study this reception phenomenon on a much broader scale.
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Parker, Luke. "Thoreau’s luminous Homer in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers." Classical Receptions Journal 12, no. 4 (September 23, 2020): 425–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa013.
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Abstract Henry David Thoreau’s relationship to Greek literature, and Homer’s Iliad in particular, is more often remarked than analysed. This article argues that Thoreau’s engagement with Homer in his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, proves central to the themes of that work highlighted by critics as well as its less-studied formal hybrid of poetry and prose. I show that Thoreau constructs Homer as the poetic ideal in which the perennially renewed life of the natural world becomes accessible to human beings caught in the fatal and unidirectional movement of historical time. Thoreau’s ideas here may track Romantic conceptions of Homer and Greek literature more generally, but Thoreau turns contemporary uncertainty around the person of Homer into reflection on the relationship between personal experience and literary expression of ‘living nature’. This turns out to structure a larger dichotomy between poetry and prose, one in which Thoreau associates the latter with authentic experience and self-expression of an individual human life. In A Week’s engagement with Homer, then, we see Thoreau negotiating not only some core concerns of his writing but also his evolution from aspiring poet to author of the works in prose that ultimately define his career.
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Haubold, Johannes. "Greek epic: a Near Eastern genre?" Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 48 (2002): 1–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s006867350000081x.
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This article addresses a problem that is rapidly advancing to the status of a new Homeric question: the relationship between Greek epic and the narrative traditions of neighbouring Near Eastern cultures. The present situation recalls the debates that raged over the issue of oral poetry not so long ago. The formula used to be the central object of contention, now it is the ‘Near Eastern parallel’. Today there are so many parallels on record that it is hard to keep track. Yet, as with the formula, the number of known parallels seems to bear little relation to their usefulness. Now as then, problems of the most basic kind abound. What, for a start,isa Near Eastern parallel? And why should we care if someone pointed one out to us? Questions such as these are only just beginning to be asked in earnest.As with the oral-traditional hypothesis, the Near Eastern hypothesis concerns the whole of Greek literature. But the problem has crystallised around epic, and so it is epic that concerns me here. In the first part of my paper, I sketch out briefly what I see as some of the parameters of the present impasse. In the second half, I suggest a framework for future study that enables us to see what we have come to call ‘Greek epic’ as one regional offshoot of the broader Near Eastern genre of cosmic history. In order to illustrate my claim, I look at one of the more notorious parallels between Greek and Near Eastern literatures: the problem of mortality as developed in theIliadand thePoem of Gilgamesh. I argue that the full implications of the issue are better understood within the overall framework proposed in this article.
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Gifford, Henry. "The Shade of Homer: A Study in Modern Greek Poetry (review)." Journal of Modern Greek Studies 10, no. 1 (1992): 167–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mgs.2010.0146.
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Leventhal, Max. "COUNTING ON EPIC: MATHEMATICAL POETRY AND HOMERIC EPIC IN ARCHIMEDES' CATTLE PROBLEM." Ramus 44, no. 1-2 (November 27, 2015): 200–221. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/rmu.2015.10.
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In 1773, the celebrated enlightenment thinker G.E. Lessing discovered in Wolfenbüttel's Herzog August Library a manuscript which contained a previously unknown Ancient Greek poem. The manuscript identified the author as Archimedes (c.287-212 BCE), and the work became known as the Cattle Problem (henceforth CP). On the surface, its twenty-two couplets capitalise on Homer's depiction of the ‘Cattle of the Sun’ in Book 12 of the Odyssey and its numerical aspect. A description of the related proportions of black, white, brown and dappled herds of cattle, which are then configured geometrically on Sicily, creates a strikingly colourful image. The author's decision to encode a number into the figure of the Cattle of the Sun styles the poem as a response to, and expansion of, Homer's scene. Reading through the work, though, it becomes clear that the mathematics is more complex than that of Homer's Odyssey.
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Gagarin, Michael. "The Poetry of Justice: Hesiod and the Origins of Greek Law." Ramus 21, no. 1 (1992): 61–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0048671x00002678.
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A growing area of contemporary legal scholarship is the field loosely described by the expression ‘law and literature’. One of the many points of intersection between law and literature is the study of legal writing, including the opinions of judges and jurists, as a form of literature. Scholars began to study the works of the Attic orators as literature as early as the first century BC, but their specific concern was with these texts as examples of Attic prose and their literary interest primarily concerned matters of rhetoric and prose style. Similarly, modern scholars who have continued this study of the orators have generally examined legal orations not as a separate genre but as another example of prose literature in the same category with history or epideictic oratory. But forensic oratory can also be studied as a form of literature sui generis, whose worth is determined by the special requirements of this genre. As background for such a study I propose to examine the earliest examples of legal oratory, as seen in the works of Homer and Hesiod.
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Jäuregui, Miguel Herrero De. "Emar Tode." Classical Antiquity 32, no. 1 (April 1, 2013): 35–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ca.2013.32.1.35.
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The expression “(on) this day” has an extremely pregnant meaning in different contexts of early Greek poetry. It is used in rituals and in solemn utterances, but it is much more than an emphatic way of saying “today.” It shows that the speaker is recognizing that a decisive, irreversible moment is approaching. Such knowledge of the appointed destiny is only accessible to the gods or to mortals inspired by them, which often makes the authoritative utterance “this day” a performative speech-act that brings immediate accomplishment. The study of the instances of this expression, both with ἦμαρ and ἡμέρα, in epic, religious poetry, and tragedy, also sheds light on the different Greek notions of what a decisive day was.
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Austin, Norman. "Conventions of Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry. William G. Thalmann." Classical Philology 82, no. 1 (January 1987): 60–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/367025.
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Furley, William D. "Praise and persuasion in Greek hymns." Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (November 1995): 29–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/631642.
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Largely because the processes of transmission have been unkind, the religious hymns sung by the Greeks during worship of a god on a public or private occasion have received less than their due attention from modern scholars. Our sources frequently mention in passing that hymns were sung on the way to Eleusis, for example, or at the well Kallichoron on arrival at Eleusis, or by the deputations to Delos for the Delia, but they usually fail to record the texts or contents of these hymns. Until the fourth century BC temple authorities did not normally have the texts of cult songs inscribed; and the works themselves were by a diversity of authors, some well-known, some obscure, making the collection of their ‘hymns’ a difficult task for the Alexandrian compilers. Some such hymns were traditional—Olen's at Delos, for example — handed down orally from generation to generation; others were taught to a chorus for a specific occasion and then forgotten. Nor do the surviving corpora of ‘hymns’ — I refer to the Homeric Hymns, Callimachus' six hymns, and the Orphic Hymns—go very far to satisfy our curiosity as to the nature of this ubiquitous hieratic poetry. The Homeric Hymns would seem to have been preludes (προοίμια) to the recitation of epic poetry; they are in the same metre and style as epic, and the singer usually announces that he is about to commence another poem on finishing the hymn. Their content may give us authentic material about a god and his attendant myths, but the context of their performance seems distinct from worship proper. The Homeric Hymns provided the basic model for Callimachus' hymns although it is clear that he adapted the model to permit innovations such as the mimetic mode of hymns 2, 5 and 6, which present an eye-witness account of religious ritual. Some find Callimachus' hymns lacking in true religious feeling; few seriously maintain that they were intended, or could have been used, for performance in cult.
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Parry, Hugh, Louise H. Pratt, Christopher Gill, and T. P. Wiseman. "Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar: Falsehood and Deception in Archaic Greek Poetics." Phoenix 49, no. 2 (1995): 172. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1192637.
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Gogolides, Evangelos. "Homer meets nano: Shrinking 2700 year old Greek poetry with state-of-the-art nanotechnology." Micro and Nano Engineering 8 (August 2020): 100061. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mne.2020.100061.
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Allan, William. "Divine justice and cosmic order in early Greek Epic." Journal of Hellenic Studies 126 (November 2006): 1–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0075426900007631.
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AbstractThis article examines the ethical and theological universe of the Homeric epics, and shows that the patterns of human and divine justice which they deploy are also to be found throughout the wider corpus of early Greek hexameter poetry. Although most scholars continue to stress the differences between theIliadandOdysseywith regard to divine justice, these come not (as is often alleged) from any change in the gods themselves but from theOdyssey'speculiar narrative structure, with its focus on one hero and his main divine patron and foe. Indeed, the action of theIliadembodies a system of norms and punishments that is no different from that of theOdyssey. Values such as justice are shown to be socially constituted in each epic on both the divine and human planes, and each level, it is argued, displays not only a hierarchy of power (and the resulting tensions), but also a structure of authority. In addition, the presentation of the gods in the wider hexameter corpus of Hesiod, the Epic Cycle and the Homeric Hymns is analysed, revealing a remarkably coherent tradition in which the possibility of divine conflict is combined with an underlying cosmic order. Finally, consideration of Near Eastern myths relating cosmic order to justice brings out the distinctiveness of the Greek system as a whole and, in particular, of the way it uses the divine society under Zeus's authority as a comprehensive explanatory model of the world.
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Janka, Claire, and Jan Stellmann. "Die Alexandreis als typologisches Epos." Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 61, no. 1 (October 1, 2020): 53–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.3790/ljb.61.1.53.
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The paper deals with the Alexandreis, a successful 12th-century Alexander-epic by French poet and scholar Walter of Châtillon. It argues that the essential ambiguity of the text manifests itself as an analogy to biblical and exegetical typology. To reflect both the production and the reception of the typological epic, Walter modifies the ancient concept of poetry as an enduring monument. This is demonstrated by analysing three cases of authorial self-reflection: the prose prologue, Alexanders visit in Troy, and the Greek-Jewish sculptor-painter Apelles.
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Mitchell, Jack. "The Culture of the Ancient Epithet: Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Translation of Imagination." Translation and Literature 22, no. 2 (July 2013): 149–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/tal.2013.0110.
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A culturally nuanced translation of archaic Greek verbal culture can only be achieved with reference to the original audience. In Bacchylides 17 (‘Theseus’ Dive’), the fifth-century poet's compound epithets operate entirely within an epic-lyric tradition, in contrast to the fourth-century verbal innovation of Timotheus. Poetry in the English language has always followed Timotheus more than Bacchylides, reaching a climax in the theory of ‘inscape’ and expressive epithets of Gerard Manley Hopkins. As a classicist, Hopkins was intimately familiar with Greek poetic diction, and his notebooks record that he interpreted the Iliad's traditional epithets contextually and not merely lexically. Analogically, we may imagine Greek audiences as projecting their own personal contexts and experience into the interpretation of the traditional compound epithets of Bacchylides 17.
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Finkelberg, Margalit. "Is KΛΕΟΣ ΑΦθΙΤΟΝ a Homeric Formula?" Classical Quarterly 36, no. 1 (May 1986): 1–5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009838800010491.
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Since being brought to light in 1853 by Adalbert Kuhn, the fact that the Homeric expression κλέος ἄφθιτον has an exact parallel in the Veda has played an extremely important role in formulating the hypothesis that Greek epic poetry is of Indo-European origin. Yet only with Milman Parry's analysis of the formulaic character of Homeric composition did it become possible to test the antiquity of κλέος ἄφθιτον on the internal grounds of Homeric diction.It is generally agreed that the conservative character of oral composition entails a high degree of correlation between the antiquity of a Homeric expression and its formulaic character. In other words, although not all Homeric formulae are necessarily of ancient origin, it is nevertheless in the formulaic stock of the epic diction that archaic and backward-looking expressions should be sought. Consequently, demonstration that κλέος ἄφθιτον (as well as other Homeric expressions with Vedic cognates) is a Homeric formula would constitute valuable evidence for its origin in Indo-European heroic poetry. Strangely enough, however, as Parry's analysis won the recognition of scholars, κλέος ἄφθιτον was identified as a Homeric formula simply because of its agreement with the Vedic śráva(s) ákṣitam. Yet examination of κλέος ἄφθιτον from the internal standpoint of the Greek epic casts serious doubts on the formulaic and traditional character of this Homeric expression.
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Wilson, Penelope. "Reading Pope's Homer in the 1720s: The Iliad Notes of Philip Doddridge." Translation and Literature 29, no. 2 (July 2020): 163–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/tal.2020.0417.
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As a young minister in 1725, Philip Doddridge (1702–1751), later to become one of the most influential figures of eighteenth-century Dissent, embarked on a close reading of Homer's Iliad in Greek alongside Pope's English verse translation of 1715–20. As he read he recorded, in shorthand notes, detailed ‘remarks’ critically comparing the Greek and English texts as works of poetry, with a particular eye to the success or otherwise of Pope's version. The unique manuscript containing the remarks has in part survived, and is held by Dr Williams' Library, London. In this discussion, Doddridge is introduced and his remarks transcribed for the first time. They provide a contemporary reading of Pope's Iliad which in its depth and detail goes well beyond anything else available for private readers, as opposed to the professional critics and scholars whose extensive attacks and defences it elicited.
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Klavan, Spencer A. "SUNG POEMS AND POETIC SONGS: HELLENISTIC DEFINITIONS OF POETRY, MUSIC AND THE SPACES IN BETWEEN." Classical Quarterly 69, no. 2 (December 2019): 597–615. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009838820000075.
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Simply by formulating a question about the nature of ancient Greek poetry or music, any modern English speaker is already risking anachronism. In recent years especially, scholars have reminded one another that the words ‘music’ and ‘poetry’ denote concepts with no easy counterpart in Greek. μουσική in its broadest sense evokes not only innumerable kinds of structured movement and sound but also the political, psychological and cosmic order of which song, verse and dance are supposed to be perceptible manifestations. Likewise, ποίησις and the ποιητικὴ τέχνη can encompass all kinds of ‘making’, from the assembly of a table to the construction of a rhetorical argument. Of course, there were specifically artistic usages of these terms—according to Plato, ‘musical and metrical production’ was the default meaning of ποίησις in everyday speech. But even in discussions which restrict themselves to the sphere of human art, we find nothing like the neat compartmentalization of harmonized rhythmic melody on the one hand, and stylized verbal composition on the other, which is often casually implied or expressly formulated in modern comparisons of ‘music’ with ‘poetry’. For many ancient theorists the City Dionysia, a dithyrambic festival and a recitation of Homer all featured different versions of one and the same form of composition, a μουσική or ποιητική to which λόγοι, γράμματα and συλλαβαί were just as essential as ἁρμονία, φθόγγοι, ῥυθμός and χρόνοι.
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Pontani, Filippomaria. "The World on a Fingernail: An Unknown Byzantine Map, Planudes, and Ptolemy." Traditio 65 (2010): 177–200. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0362152900000878.
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MS Vat. Gr. 915 (bombyc., ca. 266 × 170 mm, 258 fols.) is a most interesting collection of archaic, classical, and Hellenistic Greek poetry (from Homer and Hesiod to Pindar, from Theocritus and Lycophron down to Moschus and Musaeus) put together during the early Palaeologan Renaissance, more exactly between the last years of the thirteenth century and 1311 (theterminus ante quemis provided by the subscription on fol. 258v). The contents of this codex as well as the textual facies of several of its items have led various scholars, each from a different perspective, to conclude that it was produced in the circle of Maximus Pianudes, the most outstanding Greek scholar of his age (of which he is also in a sense the “eponymous hero”); more on this will be said below in §3.