Homer and His Age

Homer and His Age PDF Author: Andrew Lang
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465600884
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
In Homer and the Epic, ten or twelve years ago, I examined the literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are chiefly based on alleged discrepancies in the narrative, of which no one poet, it is supposed, could have been guilty. The critics repose, I venture to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it the fallacy of "the analytical reader." The poet is expected to satisfy a minutely critical reader, a personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not address. Nor are "contradictory instances" examinedÑthat is, as Blass has recently reminded his countrymen, Homer is put to a test which Goethe could not endure. No long fictitious narrative can satisfy "the analytical reader." The fallacy is that of disregarding the Homeric poet's audience. He did not sing for Aristotle or for Aristarchus, or for modern minute and reflective inquirers, but for warriors and ladies. He certainly satisfied them; but if he does not satisfy microscopic professors, he is described as a syndicate of many minstrels, living in many ages. In the present volume little is said in defence of the poet's consistency. Several chapters on that point have been excised. The way of living which Homer describes is examined, and an effort is made to prove that he depicts the life of a single brief age of culture. The investigation is compelled to a tedious minuteness, because the points of attackÑthe alleged discrepancies in descriptions of the various details of existenceÑare so minute as to be all but invisible. The unity of the Epics is not so important a topic as the methods of criticism. They ought to be sober, logical, and self-consistent. When these qualities are absent, Homeric criticism may be described, in the recent words of Blass, as "a swamp haunted by wandering fires, will o' the wisps."

Homer and His Age

Homer and His Age PDF Author: Andrew Lang
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465600884
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
In Homer and the Epic, ten or twelve years ago, I examined the literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are chiefly based on alleged discrepancies in the narrative, of which no one poet, it is supposed, could have been guilty. The critics repose, I venture to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it the fallacy of "the analytical reader." The poet is expected to satisfy a minutely critical reader, a personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not address. Nor are "contradictory instances" examinedÑthat is, as Blass has recently reminded his countrymen, Homer is put to a test which Goethe could not endure. No long fictitious narrative can satisfy "the analytical reader." The fallacy is that of disregarding the Homeric poet's audience. He did not sing for Aristotle or for Aristarchus, or for modern minute and reflective inquirers, but for warriors and ladies. He certainly satisfied them; but if he does not satisfy microscopic professors, he is described as a syndicate of many minstrels, living in many ages. In the present volume little is said in defence of the poet's consistency. Several chapters on that point have been excised. The way of living which Homer describes is examined, and an effort is made to prove that he depicts the life of a single brief age of culture. The investigation is compelled to a tedious minuteness, because the points of attackÑthe alleged discrepancies in descriptions of the various details of existenceÑare so minute as to be all but invisible. The unity of the Epics is not so important a topic as the methods of criticism. They ought to be sober, logical, and self-consistent. When these qualities are absent, Homeric criticism may be described, in the recent words of Blass, as "a swamp haunted by wandering fires, will o' the wisps."

Travelling Heroes

Travelling Heroes PDF Author: Robin Lane Fox
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141889861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 611

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Book Description
This remarkable and daringly original book proposes a new way of thinking about the Greeks and their myths in the age of the great Homeric hymns. It combines a lifetime's familiarity with Greek literature and history with the latest archeological discoveries and the author's own journeys to the main sites in the story to describe how particular Greeks of the eighth century BC travelled east and west around the Mediterranean, and how their extraordinary journeys shaped their ideas of their gods and heroes. It gathers together stories and echoes from many different ancient cultures, not just the Greek - Assyria, Egypt, the Phoenician traders - and ranges from Mesopotamia to the Rio Tinto at Huelva in modern Portugal. Its central point is the Jebel Aqra, the great mountain on the north Syrian coast which Robin Lane Fox dubs 'the southern Olympus', and around which much of the action of the book turns. Robin Lane Fox rejects the fashionable view of Homer and his near-contemporary Hesiod as poets who owed a direct debt to texts and poems from the near East, and by following the trail of the Greek travellers shows that they were, rather, in debt to their own countrymen. With characteristic flair he reveals how these travellers, progenitors of tales which have inspired writers and historians for thousands of years, understood the world before the beginnings of philosophy and western thought.

A New Companion to Homer

A New Companion to Homer PDF Author: Ian Morris
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004099890
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 784

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Book Description
This volume is the first English-language survey of Homeric studies to appear for more than a generation, and the first such work to attempt to cover all fields comprehensively. Thirty leading scholars from Europe and America provide short, authoritative overviews of the state of knowledge and current controversies in the many specialist divisions in Homeric studies. The chapters pay equal attention to literary, mythological, linguistic, historical, and archaeological topics, ranging from such long-established problems as the "Homeric Question" to newer issues like the relevance of narratology and computer-assisted quantification. The collection, the third publication in Brill's handbook series, "The Classical Tradition," will be valuable at every level of study - from the general student of literature to the Homeric specialist seeking a general understanding of the latest developments across the whole range of Homeric scholarship.

The Cambridge Guide to Homer

The Cambridge Guide to Homer PDF Author: Corinne Ondine Pache
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108663621
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 974

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Book Description
From its ancient incarnation as a song to recent translations in modern languages, Homeric epic remains an abiding source of inspiration for both scholars and artists that transcends temporal and linguistic boundaries. The Cambridge Guide to Homer examines the influence and meaning of Homeric poetry from its earliest form as ancient Greek song to its current status in world literature, presenting the information in a synthetic manner that allows the reader to gain an understanding of the different strands of Homeric studies. The volume is structured around three main themes: Homeric Song and Text; the Homeric World, and Homer in the World. Each section starts with a series of 'macropedia' essays arranged thematically that are accompanied by shorter complementary 'micropedia' articles. The Cambridge Guide to Homer thus traces the many routes taken by Homeric epic in the ancient world and its continuing relevance in different periods and cultures.

Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey"

Homer's Author: Alberto Manguel
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300280793
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
A worldwide exploration of the history, purpose, and inescapable influence of the Iliad and the Odyssey that will inspire readers to think anew about Homer’s work No one knows whether Homer was a real person, but there is no doubt that the epic poems assembled under his name are foundations of Western literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey—with their tales of the Trojan War, Achilles, Odysseus and Penelope, the Cyclops, the beautiful Helen of Troy, and the petulant gods—have inspired us for over two and a half millennia and influenced writers from Plato to Virgil, Pope to Joyce, and Dante to Margaret Atwood. In this graceful and sweeping book, Alberto Manguel traces the lineage of Homer’s poems. He examines their original purpose, either as allegory or record of history; surveys the challenges the pagan poems presented to the early Christian world; and looks at their reception after the Reformation through the present day. In this revised and expanded edition, Manguel ignites new ways of thinking about these classic works.

A Handbook of Greek Literature from Homer to the Age of Lucian

A Handbook of Greek Literature from Homer to the Age of Lucian PDF Author: Herbert Jennings Rose
Publisher: New York : E.P. Dutton
ISBN:
Category : Greek literature
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
This handbook is a companion volume to "Handbook of Greek mythology" and "Handbook of Latin literature", and comprises a brief yet comprehensive survey of developments in Greek literature from Homer through Lucian. It is a continuous narrative, complete in itself and assuming no previous acquaintance with Greek writings. The author analyzes not only the writers and their works, but also their social backgrounds and stimuli.

Hearing Homer's Song

Hearing Homer's Song PDF Author: Robert Kanigel
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0525520945
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
From the acclaimed biographer of Jane Jacobs and Srinivasa Ramanujan comes the first full life and work of arguably the most influential classical scholar of the twentieth century, who overturned long-entrenched notions of ancient epic poetry and enlarged the very idea of literature. In this literary detective story, Robert Kanigel gives us a long overdue portrait of an Oakland druggist's son who became known as the "Darwin of Homeric studies." So thoroughly did Milman Parry change our thinking about the origins of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey that scholars today refer to a "before" Parry and an "after." Kanigel describes the "before," when centuries of readers, all the way up until Parry's trailblazing work in the 1930's, assumed that the Homeric epics were "written" texts, the way we think of most literature; and the "after" that we now live in, where we take it for granted that they are the result of a long and winding oral tradition. Parry made it his life's work to develop and prove this revolutionary theory, and Kanigel brilliantly tells his remarkable story--cut short by Parry's mysterious death by gunshot wound at the age of thirty-three. From UC Berkeley to the Sorbonne to Harvard to Yugoslavia--where he traveled to prove his idea definitively by studying its traditional singers of heroic poetry--we follow Parry on his idiosyncratic journey, observing just how his early notions blossomed into a full-fledged theory. Kanigel gives us an intimate portrait of Parry's marriage to Marian Thanhouser and their struggles as young parents in Paris, and explores the mystery surrounding Parry's tragic death at the Palms Hotel in Los Angeles. Tracing Parry's legacy to the modern day, Kanigel explores how what began as a way to understand the Homeric epics became the new field of "oral theory," which today illuminates everything from Beowulf to jazz improvisation, from the Old Testament to hip-hop.

The Children's Homer

The Children's Homer PDF Author: Padraic Colum
Publisher: Aladdin
ISBN: 1534450378
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 3

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Book Description
From master storyteller Padriac Colum, winner of a Newbery Honor for The Golden Fleece, comes a collection of fifteen timeless stories inspired by classic Greek literature. Travel back to a mythical time when Achilles, aided by the gods, waged war against the Trojans. And join Odysseus on his journey through murky waters, facing obstacles like the terrifying Scylla and whirring Charybdis, the beautiful enchantress Circe, and the land of the raging Cyclôpes. Using narrative threads from The Iliad and The Odyssey, Padraic Colum weaves a stunning adventure with all the drama and power that Homer intended.

American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent

American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent PDF Author: Kathleen A. Foster
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030022589X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
The fascinating story of the transformation of American watercolor practice between 1866 and 1925 The formation of the American Watercolor Society in 1866 by a small, dedicated group of painters transformed the perception of what had long been considered a marginal medium. Artists of all ages, styles, and backgrounds took up watercolor in the 1870s, inspiring younger generations of impressionists and modernists. By the 1920s many would claim it as "the American medium." This engaging and comprehensive book tells the definitive story of the metamorphosis of American watercolor practice between 1866 and 1925, identifying the artist constituencies and social forces that drove the new popularity of the medium. The major artists of the movement - Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, William Trost Richards, Thomas Moran, Thomas Eakins, Charles Prendergast, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, Charles Demuth, and many others - are represented with lavish color illustrations. The result is a fresh and beautiful look at watercolor's central place in American art and culture.

The Cambridge Companion to Homer

The Cambridge Companion to Homer PDF Author: Robert Louis Fowler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521012461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Homer is a guide to the essential aspects of Homeric criticism and scholarship, including the reception of the poems in ancient and modern times. Written by an international team of scholars, it is intended to be the first port of call for students at all levels, with introductions to important subjects and suggestions for further exploration. Alongside traditional topics like the Homeric Question, the divine apparatus of the poems, the formulae, the characters and the archaeological background, there are detailed discussions of similes, speeches, the poet as story-teller and the genre of epic both within Greece and worldwide. The reception chapters include assessments of ancient Greek and Roman readings as well as selected modern interpretations from the eighteenth century to the present day. Chapters on Homer in English translation and Homer in the history of ideas round out the collection.