Homer and the Oral Tradition

by G. S. Kirk

• ISBN13: 9780521136716
• ISBN10: 0521136717
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Songs of Homer (Cambridge University Press, 1962) was a major contribution to Homeric studies, establishing important theories about the composition, structure and transmission of the monumental poems. In this 1976 volume, Geoffrey Kirk returns to Homer, but the themes are largely different. He considers in particular the nature of oral and epic poetry, and the meaning of an oral tradition. There are problems here of interest not only to classicists and Homeric specialists but also to students of English and comparative literature, and to anthropologists concerned with the literature of traditional societies. Those pieces that were previously published were revised and unified for the volume. The longest section, on 'the oral and the literary epic', is derived from the J. H. Gray Lectures, which Professor Kirk delivered in Cambridge in 1974 and which had not been previously published in any form.

Table of Contents

Preface

Homer: the meaning of an oral tradition

Dark Age and oral poet

War and the warrior in the Homeric poems

The oral and the literary epic

Homer and modern oral poetry: some confusions

Homer's Iliad and ours

Verse-structure and sentence-structure in Homer

Formular language and oral quality

The search for the real Homer

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.