| Description |
1 online resource |
| Contents |
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Pronunciation Key -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part I: Homer's Sign-Language -- 1 Homeric Signs and Traditional Referentiality -- Part II: Homeric and South Slavic Epic -- 2 Homer and the South Slavic Guslar: The Analogy and the Singers -- 3 Homer and the South Slavic Guslar: Traditional Register -- 4 Homer and the South Slavic Guslar: Traditional Referentiality -- Part III: Reading Homer's Signs -- 5 Story-Pattern as Sêma: The Odyssey as a Return Song -- 6 Typical Scenes of Feast and Lament |
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7 Word, Idiom, Speech-Act: The Traditional Phrase as Sêma -- Part IV: Homeric Signs and Odyssey 23 -- 8 Rereading Odyssey 23 -- Afterword: "Deor" and Anglo-Saxon Sêmata -- Appendix I: Feasting in Homer -- Appendix II: "Deor" -- Notes -- Master Bibliography -- Index -- Index Locorum |
| Summary |
In recent decades, the evidence for an oral epic tradition in ancient Greece has grown enormously along with our ever-increasing awareness of worldwide oral traditions. John Foley here examines the artistic implications that oral tradition holds for the understanding of the Iliad and Odyssey in order to establish a context for their original performance and modern-day reception. In Homer's Traditional Art, Foley addresses three crucially interlocking areas that lead us to a fuller appreciation of the Homeric poems. He first explores the reality of Homer as their actual author, examining historical and comparative evidence to propose that "Homer" is a legendary and anthropomorphic figure rather than a real-life author. He next presents the poetic tradition as a specialized and highly resonant language bristling with idiomatic implication. Finally, he looks at Homer's overall artistic achievement, showing that it is best evaluated via a poetics aimed specifically at works that emerge from oral tradition. Along the way, Foley offers new perspectives on such topics as characterization and personal interaction in the epics, the nature of Penelope's heroism, the implications of feasting and lament, and the problematic ending of the Odyssey. His comparative references to the South Slavic oral epic open up new vistas on Homer's language, narrative patterning, and identity. Homer's Traditional Art represents a disentangling of the interwoven strands of orality, textuality, and verbal art. It shows how we can learn to appreciate how Homer's art succeeds not in spite of the oral tradition in which it was composed but rather through its unique agency |
| Notes |
Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph |
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English |
| Subject |
Epic poetry, Greek -- Greece -- History and criticism
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Oral-formulaic analysis.
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Oral tradition.
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Rhetoric, Ancient.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- Ancient & Classical.
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LITERARY CRITICISM / Ancient & Classical
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Epic poetry, Greek
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Oral-formulaic analysis
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Oral tradition
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Rhetoric, Ancient
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Greek & Latin Languages & Literatures.
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Languages & Literatures.
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Greece
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
0271072415 |
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9780271072418 |
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