Homer S Traditional Art

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.

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.

This is a book about Homer, myth and art. The Iliad and Odyssey so dominate our view of ancient Greece that our natural reaction on viewing certain works of early Greek art is to identify them as 'scenes from Homer'. However, Anthony Snodgrass argues that, so far from 'illustrating' the Homeric poems, these works very rarely show signs of acquaintance with the Iliad or Odyssey, seldom even choosing their subject-matter from them. When the subjects do overlap, the artists occasionally give positive signs of preferring a non-Homeric version of the episode. He then attempts to explain why this should be so: despite Homer's unique standing in antiquity, the artists inhabited an independent world, where their own inspirations and concerns dominated their production. It is only the traditional dominance of the literary study of antiquity which has hidden this from us.

Homer's Allusive Art argues for a new understanding of Homeric allusion and its place in literary history through a series of interlocking case studies, exploring whether there can have been historical continuity in a poetics of allusion stretching from the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh through to the Aeneid and Metamorphoses.

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 Gesture is the first book of its kind to consider the epic formula in terms that are gestural as well as verbal. Drawing on studies from multiple disciplines, including movement theory, dance studies, phenomenology, and early film, it suggests new approaches for interpreting the relationship between repetition and embodiment in Homer. Through a series of dynamic close readings, Purves argues that the deep-seated habits and gestures of epic bodies are instrumental to our understanding of the Iliad and Odyssey, especially insofar as they attune us to the kinetic structures and sensibilities that shape the meaning of the poems. Each of the chapters isolates a scene in which a specific action, posture, or gesture (falling, running, leaping, standing, and reaching) emerges from the background of its other iterations in order to make larger claims about its poetic significance within the epics as a whole. Beginning from the premise that gestures are shared between characters and often identically repeated within the poems' formulaic system, the book reconsiders long-standing arguments about Homeric agency and character by focusing on those moments when a gesture diverges from its expected course, redirecting the plot or drawing the poem in new and surprising directions. Homer and the Poetics of Gesture not only affords new insights into the nature of epic repetition and poetic originality but also reveals unnoticed connections between Homeric structure and technique and the embodied habits and movements of the characters within the poems.

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.

While there have been many studies devoted to the major heroes and heroines of Homeric epic, among them Achilles, Odysseus, and Helen, the figure of Menelaus has remained notably overlooked in this strand of scholarship. Menelaus in the Archaic Period is the first book-length study of the Homeric character, taking a multidisciplinary approach to his depiction in archaic Greek poetry, art, and cult through detailed analysis of ancient literary, visual, and material evidence. The volume is divided into two parts, the first of which examines the portrayal of Menelaus in the Homeric poems as a unique 'personality' with an integral role to play in each narrative, as depicted through typical patterns of speech and action and through intertextual allusion. The second part explores his representation both in other poetry of the archaic period - including lyric poetry and Simonides' 'Plataea elegy ' - and also archaic art and local Sparta cult, drawing on the literary, archaeological, and inscriptional evidence for the cult of Menelaus with Helen at Therapne. The depiction of Menelaus in archaic art is a particular focal point: Chapter 4 provides a methodology for the interpretation of heroic narrative on archaic Greek vases through iconography and inscriptions and establishes his conventional visual 'identity' on black figure Athenian vases, while an annotated catalogue of images details those that fall outside the 'norm'. Menelaus emerges from this comprehensive study as a unique and likeable character whose relationship with Helen was a popular theme in both epic poetry and vase painting, but one whose portrayal evinced a significant narrative range, with an array of continuities and differences in how he was represented by the Greeks, not only within the archaic period but also in comparison to classical Athens.