Homer and the Resources of Memory

Homer and the Resources of Memory PDF Author: Elizabeth Minchin
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780198152576
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
How could a poet who worked in an oral tradition maintain the momentum of his song? How could a poet such as Homer weave a tale which filled an evening or, perhaps, a whole long night? The answer lies in memory, as we have known. But this bald explanation does not do justice either to thecomplexity of memory or to the richness of the Homeric epics. Now that so much more information has become available to us, from cognitive psychology and linguistics, about the workings of the mind, we can identify with greater precision those contributions which memory makes to the composition andperformance of oral traditional song. In this study the author shows that the demands made on the poet, who relies neither on rote memory nor on written notes, have led him adopt to certain memory-based strategies which have left their traces in the text. What we discover is that the poet in an oraltradition makes intense and creative use of those resources of memory, which are available to us all - episodic memory, auditory memory, visual memory, and spatial memory - to assist him both in the preparation of his song and at the moment of performance.

Homer and the Resources of Memory

Homer and the Resources of Memory PDF Author: Elizabeth Minchin
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780198152576
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book Here

Book Description
How could a poet who worked in an oral tradition maintain the momentum of his song? How could a poet such as Homer weave a tale which filled an evening or, perhaps, a whole long night? The answer lies in memory, as we have known. But this bald explanation does not do justice either to thecomplexity of memory or to the richness of the Homeric epics. Now that so much more information has become available to us, from cognitive psychology and linguistics, about the workings of the mind, we can identify with greater precision those contributions which memory makes to the composition andperformance of oral traditional song. In this study the author shows that the demands made on the poet, who relies neither on rote memory nor on written notes, have led him adopt to certain memory-based strategies which have left their traces in the text. What we discover is that the poet in an oraltradition makes intense and creative use of those resources of memory, which are available to us all - episodic memory, auditory memory, visual memory, and spatial memory - to assist him both in the preparation of his song and at the moment of performance.

Speaking Volumes

Speaking Volumes PDF Author: Janet Watson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004351027
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This collection of essays provides a valuable cross-section of recent research into the interrelationship of orality and literacy in the ancient Greek and Roman world.

Homer’s Iliad

Homer’s Iliad PDF Author: Katharina Wesselmann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110687941
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The renowned Basler Homer-Kommentar of the Iliad, edited by Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz and originally published in German, presents the latest developments in Homeric scholarship. Through the English translation of this ground-breaking reference work, edited by S. Douglas Olson, its valuable findings are now made accessible to students and scholars worldwide.

Homer and the Poetics of Hades

Homer and the Poetics of Hades PDF Author: George Alexander Gazis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191091154
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Homer and the Poetics of Hades offers a new and unique approach to the Iliad and, more particularly, the Odyssey through an exploration of the role and function of the Underworld as a poetic resource permitting an alternative perspective on the epic past. By portraying Hades as a realm where vision is not possible, Homer creates a unique poetic environment in which social constraints and divine prohibitions do not apply, resulting in a narrative which emulates that of the Muses but which at the same time is markedly distinct from it. In Hades experimentation with, and alteration of, important epic forms and values can be pursued with greater freedom, giving rise to a different kind of poetics: the 'poetics of Hades'. In the Iliad, Homer offers us a glimpse of how this alternative poetics works through the visit of Patroclus' shade in Achilles' dream. The recollection offered by the shade reveals an approach to its past in which regret, self-pity, and a lingering memory of intimate and emotional moments displace an objective tone and traditional exposition of heroic values. However, the potential of Hades for providing alternative means of commemorating the past is more fully explored in the 'Nekyia' of Odyssey 11: there, Odysseus' extraordinary ability to see the dead in Hades allows him to meet and interview the shades of heroines and heroes of the epic past, while the absolute confinement of Hades allows the shades to recount their stories from their own personal points of view. The poetic implications are significant, since by visiting Hades and listening to the stories of the shades Odysseus, and Homer with him, gain access to a tradition in which epic values associated with gender roles and even divine law are suspended in favour of a more immediate and personally inflected approach to the epic past. As readers, this alternative poetics offers us more than just a revised framework within which to navigate the Iliad and the Odyssey, inviting as it does a more nuanced understanding of the Greeks' anxieties around mortality and posthumous fame.

Homer

Homer PDF Author: Jonathan S. Burgess
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857735144
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
What reader could fail to be enthralled by the Iliad and the Odyssey, those greatest heroic epics of antiquity? Yet the author of those immortal text remains, in the end, an enigma. The central paradox of 'Homer' is that- while recognized as producing poetry of incomparable genius- even in the ancien world nobody knew who he was. As a result, the myth-maker became the subject of myth. For the satirist Lucian (c.125-180 CE) he ws a captive Babylonian. Other traditions have Homer born in Smyrna, or on the island of Chios, or portray him as a blind and wandering minstrel. In his new and authoritative introduction, Jonathan S. Burgess addresses fundamental questions of provenance and authorship. Besides conveying why these epics have been cherished down the ages, he discusses their historical sources and the possible impact on the Iliad and Odyssey of Indo-European, Near Eastern and folktale influences. Tracing their transmission through the ancient, medieval and modern periods, the author further examines questions of theory and reception.

Reading Homer

Reading Homer PDF Author: Kostas Myrsiades
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 0838642195
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
These nine new essays on Homer's epics deal not only with major Homeric themes of time (honor), kleos (fame), geras (rewards), the psychology of Homeric warriors, and the re-evaluation of type scenes, but also with Homer's influence on contemporary film. Following the introduction and an essay which sets the historical background for the epics, four essays are devoted to fresh analysis of key passages and themes while another four turn to a discussion of the film Troy and Homer's influence on two other genres of American cinema.

Reading Homer's Iliad

Reading Homer's Iliad PDF Author: Kostas Myrsiades
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1684484502
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
We still read Homer’s epic the Iliad two-and-one-half millennia since its emergence for the questions it poses and the answers it provides for our age, as viable today as they were in Homer’s own times. What is worth dying for? What is the meaning of honor and fame? What are the consequences of intense emotion and violence? What does recognition of one’s mortality teach? We also turn to Homer’s Iliad in the twenty-first century for the poet’s preoccupation with the essence of human life. His emphasis on human understanding of mortality, his celebration of the human mind, and his focus on human striving after consciousness and identity has led audiences to this epic generation after generation. This study is a book-by-book commentary on the epic’s 24 parts, meant to inform students new to the work. Endnotes clarify and elaborate on myths that Homer leaves unfinished, explain terms and phrases, and provide background information. The volume concludes with a general bibliography of work on the Iliad, in addition to bibliographies accompanying each book’s commentary.

Homer’s Iliad

Homer’s Iliad PDF Author: Marina Coray
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110610183
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The renowned Basler Homer-Kommentar of the Iliad, edited by Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz and originally published in German, presents the latest developments in Homeric scholarship. Through the English translation of this ground-breaking reference work, edited by S. Douglas Olson, its valuable findings are now made accessible to students and scholars worldwide.

Homer’s Iliad

Homer’s Iliad PDF Author: Claude Brügger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501504398
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Research into traditional areas of Homeric scholarship (e.g., language, the structure of the text, etc.) has come a long way since the last comprehensive commentaries on the Iliad were carried out, that is, the commentary by Ameis-Hentze in German language in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century as well as the Cambridge commentary by Kirk et. al. in English language in the 1980/90s. Much of this kind of research is now set upon a much surer methodological and theoretical foundation. Developments in the field of Mycenology and in the study of Linear B, oral poetry, and the history of ancient Troy in particular, have made possible a number of new insights and interpretive possibilities in Homer’s epic. Moreover, modern secondary literature of all major languages has been systematically covered. The "Basel Commentary" to the Iliad is a new, up-to-date, standard work that addresses these issues directly and will be of interest to scholars, teachers, and students alike. Central to the commentary on Iliad 24 is the interpretation of one of the most exciting and most moving scenes of the Iliad: how Priam, the king of Troy, makes his way to his mortal enemy Achilles, by whose hand his son Hector had fallen; how the god Hermes leads the old man almost magically into the army camp of the Greeks; how Achilles, at the end of an emotional encounter with Priam, leaves the body of Hector for burial.

Markers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry

Markers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry PDF Author: Thomas J. Nelson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009085905
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
Challenging many established narratives of literary history, this book investigates how the earliest known Greek poets (seventh to fifth centuries BCE) signposted their debts to their predecessors and prior traditions – placing markers in their works for audiences to recognise (much like the 'Easter eggs' of modern cinema). Within antiquity, such signposting has often been considered the preserve of later literary cultures, closely linked with the development of libraries, literacy and writing. In this wide-ranging new study, Thomas Nelson shows that these devices were already deeply ingrained in oral archaic Greek poetry, deconstructing the artificial boundary between a supposedly 'primal' archaic literature and a supposedly 'sophisticated' book culture of Hellenistic Alexandria and Rome. In three interlocking case studies, he highlights how poets from Homer to Pindar employed the language of hearsay, memory and time to index their allusive relationships, as they variously embraced, reworked and challenged their inherited tradition.