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E-book
Author Garner, Robert Scott, 1973-

Title Traditional elegy : the interplay of meter, tradition, and context in early Greek poetry / R. Scott Garner
Published New York : Oxford University Press, 2011

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 152 pages) : illustrations
Series American classical studies ; v. 56
American classical studies ; no. 56
Contents Elegy and its traditional possibilities -- Formulas in early Greek elegy -- Epic correption or "traditional" correption? -- Further considerations -- Appendices : I. Lexical formulas shared by the stichic hexameter, elegaic hexameter, and elegaic pentameter -- II. Correption percentages by line position in the Iliad -- III. Correption percentages by line position in the Odyssey -- IV. Long-vowel correption percentages by line position in the Iliad -- V. Long-vowel correption percentages by line position in the Odyssey -- VI. Long-vowel epic correption categorizations for Homer -- VII. Short-vowel epic correption in Iliad I and Odyssey I -- VIII. Long-vowel epic correption in early elegy -- IX. Short-vowel epic correption in early elegy -- X. Correption in epic beyond Homer
Summary Though often assumed by scholars to be a product of traditional, and perhaps oral, compositional practices comparable to those found in early Greek epic, archaic elegy has not until this point been analyzed in similar detail with respect to such verse-making techniques. This volume is intended to redress some of this imbalance by exploring several issues related to the production of Greek elegiac poetry. By investigating elegy's metrical partitioning and its localizing patterns of repeated phraseology, Traditional Elegy makes clear that the oral-formulaic processes lying at the heart of Homeric epic bear close resemblance to those that also originally made archaic elegy possible. However, the volume's argument is then able to be pressed even further by looking at the most common metrical "anomaly" in early elegy--epic correption--in order to demonstrate that elegiac poets in the archaic period were not simply mimicking an earlier productive style but were actively engaging with such traditional techniques in order to produce and reproduce their own poems. Because correption exhibits several patterns of employment that depend upon the meshing and adapting of traditional phraseological units, it becomes clear that in elegy--just as it is in epic--this metrical phenomenon is inextricably entwined with traditional techniques of verse composition, and we therefor have strong evidence that elegiac poets of the archaic period were still making active use of these oral-formulaic techniques, even if actual oral composition itself cannot be proven for any individual author or poetic fragment. The implications of such findings are quite large, as they require a wholesale shift in our modern methods of inquiry into elegy for a wide range of concerns of meter, phraseology, and even the much broader issues of intended meaning and overall aesthetics. --Book Jacket
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Elegiac poetry, Greek -- History and criticism
Greek language -- Metrics and rhythmics.
Oral-formulaic analysis.
Oral tradition -- Greece -- History -- To 1500
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Ancient & Classical.
Elegiac poetry, Greek
Greek language -- Metrics and rhythmics
Oral-formulaic analysis
Oral tradition
Greece
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780199842414
0199842418
9780199895281
0199895287