Homeric Epic and its Reception Interpretive Essays

by Schein, Seth L.

• ISBN13: 9780199589418
• ISBN10: 0199589410
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-01-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Homeric Epic and its Reception, comprising twelve chapters--some previously published but revised for this collection, and others appearing here in print for the first time--offers literary interpretations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. While some chapters closely study the diction, meter, style, and thematic resonance of particular passages and episodes in the Iliad and the Odyssey, others follow diverse pathways into the interpretation of the epics, including mythological allusion, intertextuality, the metrics of the Homeric hexameter, and the fundamental contrast between divinity and humanity. Also included are two chapters which focus on the work of Milman Parry and Ioannis Kakridis, founders of the two most fruitful twentieth-century scholarly approaches to Homeric scholarship: the study of the Iliad and the Odyssey as traditional oral formulaic poetry (Parry), and the study of the poems' adaptations and transformations of traditional mythology, folktales, and poetic motifs in accordance with their distinctive themes and poetic purposes (Kakridis). The volume draws to a close with three chapters which discuss some of the most compelling poetic and critical receptions of the Iliad and the Odyssey since the late nineteenth century, and the institutional reception of the epics in colleges and universities in the United States over the past two centuries. Written over a period of 45 years, this collection reflects the author's long-standing interest in, and scholarly and critical approaches to, the literary interpretation of Homeric poetry.

Author Biography

Seth L. Schein, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis

Seth L. Schein taught Classics and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, the State University of New York, the University of California, Santa Cruz, City University of New York, and the University of California, Davis from 1968 until he retired in 2012.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Death of Simoeisios: Iliad 4.474-489
2. The Horses of Achilles in Book 17 of the Iliad
3. Odysseus and Polyphemos in the Odyssey
4. Mythological Allusion in the Odyssey: Herakles and the Bow of Odysseus
5. Divine and Human in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
6. Homeric Intertextuality: Two Examples
7. A Cognitive Approach to Greek Meter: Hermann's Bridge in the Homeric Hexameter and the Interpretation of Iliad 24
8. Milman Parry and the Literary Interpretation of Homeric Poetry
9. Ioannis Kakridis and Neoanalysis
10. Cavafy and Iliad 24: A Modern Alexandrian Interprets Homer
11. 'War, What is it Good For' in Homer's Iliad and Four Receptions?
12. An American Homer for the Twentieth Century
Bibliography
Indexes