Homeric Responses

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Overview

The Homeric Iliad and Odyssey are among the world’s foremost epics. Yet, millennia after their composition, basic questions remain about them. Who was Homer—a real or an ideal poet? When were the poems composed—at a single point in time, or over centuries of composition and performance? And how were the poems committed to writing? These uncertainties have been known as The Homeric Question, and many scholars, including Gregory Nagy, have sought to solve it.
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Overview

The Homeric Iliad and Odyssey are among the world’s foremost epics. Yet, millennia after their composition, basic questions remain about them. Who was Homer—a real or an ideal poet? When were the poems composed—at a single point in time, or over centuries of composition and performance? And how were the poems committed to writing? These uncertainties have been known as The Homeric Question, and many scholars, including Gregory Nagy, have sought to solve it.
In Homeric Responses, Nagy presents a series of essays that further elaborate his theories regarding the oral composition and evolution of the Homeric epics. Building on his previous work in Homeric Questions and Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond and responding to some of his critics, he examines such issues as the importance of performance and the interaction between audience and poet in shaping the poetry; the role of the rhapsode (the performer of the poems) in the composition and transmission of the poetry; the “irreversible mistakes” and cross-references in the Iliad and Odyssey as evidences of artistic creativity; and the Iliadic description of the shield of Achilles as a pointer to the world outside the poem, the polis of the audience.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780292705548
  • Publisher: University of Texas Press
  • Publication date: 12/4/2003
  • Pages: 116
  • Sales rank: 958,901
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.28 (d)

Meet the Author

Gregory Nagy has been the Director of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., since 2000, and continues to serve as the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
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Table of Contents

Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction. Four Questions
Question 1. About Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives
Question 2. About the Evolutionary Model
Question 3. About Dictation Models
Question 4. About Cross-References in Homer
Chapter 1. Homeric Responses
Chapter 2. Homeric Rhapsodes and the Concept of Diachronic Skewing
Chapter 3. Irreversible Mistakes and Homeric Clairvoyance
Chapter 4. The Shield of Achilles: Ends of the Iliad and Beginnings of the Polis
Bibliography
Index
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