Product details
- ISBN 9780847694242
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 13 May 1999
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The essays in this collection addresses questions of intense interest in Homeric studies today: the questions of performance and poet-audience interaction, especially as depicted in idealized performances within the Iliad and the Odyssey; the ways in which epic incorporates material of diverse genres, such as women's laments, blame poetry, or folk tales; how the ideological balance of epic can change and be influenced by "alternative ideologies" introduced through the incorporation of new material; the implications of the continuity of tradition for etymological studies; and how the traditional nature of epic affects textual criticism.
The essays differ in focus and method, but all share one fundamental approach to Homer: an understanding of the Homeric tradition as a poetic system that expresses and preserves what is culturally important and a view of the Homeric epics as instances of a cultural tradition which they attempt to explore through the epics themselves and through the comparative, anthropological, and linguistic evidence they bring to bear on these texts.
A unique collection that explores Homeric poetry through a variety of tools and approaches—linguistics, philology, cultural anthropology, sociology, textual criticism, and archeology—this volume will be of interest to all scholars and students of oral poetry and Classical literature.
