The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic

The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic PDF Author: Douglas Frame
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780835782418
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description

The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic

The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic PDF Author: Douglas Frame
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780835782418
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic

The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Epic poetry, Greek
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"The main argument of this book is that the connection suggested by Homer between the 'wiles' and the 'wanderings' of Odysseus in fact rested upon an earlier tradition both significant and deep. The origin of this tradition has to do with the etymology of the Greek word nóos, 'mind', which I propose to connect with the Greek verb néomai, 'return home'. Such an effort requires that nóos be reconstructed as nos-os, a derivative from the verbal root nes- The significance of this proposal for the tradition underlying the Odyssey is clear. It implies that the connection still felt by Homer between the 'wiliness' and the 'wandering' of Odysseus goes back to a fundamental connection between 'mind' and 'returning home', and that the relation between what Odysseus 'is' and what he 'does' has a solid basis in the history of the Greek language."--Introduction.

The Anger of Achilles

The Anger of Achilles PDF Author: Leonard Charles Muellner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801432309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Menis means more than an individual's emotional response. On the basis of the epic exemplifications of the word, Muellner defines the term as a cosmic sanction against behavior that violates the most basic rules of human society. Virtually absent from the Odyssey, the term menis appears in the Iliad in conjunction with the enforcement of social rules, especially the rules of reciprocal exchange. To understand the way menis functions, Muellner invokes the concept of tabu developed by Mary Douglas, stressing both the power and the danger that accrue to a person who violates such rules. Transgressive behavior has both a creative and a destructive aspect.

The Returns of Odysseus

The Returns of Odysseus PDF Author: Irad Malkin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520920262
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This remarkably rich and multifaceted study of early Greek exploration makes an original contribution to current discussions of the encounters between Greeks and non-Greeks. Focusing in particular on myths about Odysseus and other heroes who visited foreign lands on their mythical voyages homeward after the Trojan War, Irad Malkin shows how these stories functioned to mediate encounters and conceptualize ethnicity and identity during the Archaic and Classical periods. Synthesizing a wide range of archaeological, mythological, and literary sources, this exceptionally learned book strengthens our understanding of early Greek exploration and city-founding along the coasts of the Western Mediterranean, reconceptualizes the role of myth in ancient societies, and revitalizes our understanding of ethnicity in antiquity. Malkin shows how the figure of Odysseus became a proto-colonial hero whose influence transcended the Greek-speaking world. The return-myths constituted a generative mythology, giving rise to oral poems, stories, iconographic imagery, rituals, historiographical interpretation, and the articulation of ethnic identities. Reassessing the role of Homer and alternative return-myths, the book argues for the active historical function of myth and collective representations and traces their changing roles through a spectrum of colonial perceptions—from the proto-colonial, through justifications of expansion and annexation, and up to decolonization.

Homer and Early Greek Epic

Homer and Early Greek Epic PDF Author: Margalit Finkelberg
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311067145X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
This collection includes thirty scholarly essays on Homer and Greek epic poetry published by Margalit Finkelberg over the past three decades. The topics discussed reflect the author’s research interests and represent the main directions of her contribution to Homeric studies: Homer's language and diction, archaic Greek epic tradition, Homer's world and values, transmission and reception of the Homeric poems. The book gives special emphasis to some of the central issues in contemporary Homeric scholarship, such as oral-formulaic theory and the role of the individual poet; Neoanalysis and the character of the relationship between Homer and the tradition about the Trojan War; the multi-layered texture of the Homeric poems; the Homeric Question; the canonic status of the Iliad and the Odyssey in antiquity and modernity. All the articles are revised and updated. The book addresses both scholars and advanced students of Classics, as well as non-specialists interested in the Homeric poems and their journey through centuries.

The Uses of Greek Mythology

The Uses of Greek Mythology PDF Author: Ken Dowden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134926278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
In an innovative sequence of topics, Ken Dowden explores the uses Greeks made of myth and the uses to which we can put myth in recovering the richness of their culture. Most aspects of Greek life and history - including war, religion and sexuality - which are discernable through myth, as well as most modern approaches, are given a context in a book which is designed to be useful, accessible and stimulating.

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.

The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception

The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception PDF Author: Marco Fantuzzi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316298213
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 855

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Book Description
The poems of the Epic Cycle are assumed to be the reworking of myths and narratives which had their roots in an oral tradition predating that of many of the myths and narratives which took their present form in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The remains of these texts allow us to investigate diachronic aspects of epic diction as well as the extent of variation within it on the part of individual authors - two of the most important questions in modern research on archaic epic. They also help to illuminate the early history of Greek mythology. Access to the poems, however, has been thwarted by their current fragmentary state. This volume provides the scholarly community and graduate students with a thorough critical foundation for reading and interpreting them.

Odysseus, Hero of Practical Intelligence

Odysseus, Hero of Practical Intelligence PDF Author: Jeffrey Barnouw
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761830269
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
In dramatic representations and narrative reports of inner deliberation the Odyssey displays the workings of the human mind and its hero's practical intelligence, epitomized by anticipating consequences and controlling his actions accordingly. Once his hope of returning home as husband, father and king is renewed on Calypso's isle, Odysseus shows a consistent will to focus on this purpose and subordinate other impulses to it. His fabled cleverness is now fully engaged in a gradually emerging plan, as he thinks back from that final goal through a network of means to achieve it. He relies on "signs"--inferences in the form "if this, then that" as defined by the Stoic Chrysippus--and the nature of his intelligence is thematically underscored through contrast with others' recklessness, that is, failure to heed signs or reckon consequences. In Homeric deliberation, the mind is torn between competing options or intentions, not between "reason" and "desire." The lack of distinct opposing faculties and hierarchical organization in the Homeric mind, far from archaic simplicity, prefigures the psychology of Chrysippus, who cites deliberation scenes from the Odyssey against Plato's hierarchical tri-partite model. From the Stoics, there follows a psychological tradition leading through Hobbes and Leibniz, to Peirce and Dewey. These thinkers are drawn upon to show the significance of the conception of "thinking" first articulated in the Odyssey. Homer's work inaugurates an approach that has provoked philosophical conflict persisting into the present, and opposition to pragmatism and Pragmatism can be discerned in prominent critiques of Homer and his hero which are analyzed and countered in this study.

Greek Gods, Human Lives

Greek Gods, Human Lives PDF Author: Mary R. Lefkowitz
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300107692
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Insightful and fun, this new guide to an ancient mythology explains why the Greek gods and goddesses are still so captivating to us, revisiting the work of Homer, Ovid, Virgil, and Shakespeare in search of the essence of these stories. (Mythology & Folklore)