Homeric Responses

by Nagy, Gregory

• ISBN13: 9780292705531
• ISBN10: 0292705530
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	vii
Acknowledgments	viii
Prologue	ix
Introduction. Four Questions	1	(1)
About Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives	1	(1)
About the Evolutionary Model	2	(2)
About Dictation Models	4	(3)
About Cross-References in Homer	7	(14)
Homeric Responses	21	(18)
Homeric Rhapsodes and the Concept of Diachronic Skewing	39	(10)
Irreversible Mistakes and Homeric Clairvoyance	49	(23)
The Shield of Achilles: Ends of the Iliad and Beginnings of the Polis	72	(17)
Bibliography	89	(8)
Index	97