Chapter 4. The Language of Achilles: Language, Formula, and Style {146} Every hero is a performer. That is the essence of the dictum Peleus entrusts to Phoinix, who in turn reminds Achilles to be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds. [1] Between the two concepts no distinction is drawn. Both are performances. The poetry anticipates Austin and Searle in… Read more
Chatper 5. The Expansion Aesthetic {206} The changes made in formulaic patterns by the addition of words, or by melding with other patterns, can be seen at a number of points in Achilles’ longest speech. I shall concentrate on a few groups of lines that offer the best examples of the technique. Then, the expansions can be related to the rhetoric of the speech as a whole… Read more
The Poet as Hero: A Conclusion {231} Contact and distance. In these terms, I have approached Homer’s Iliad, in an attempt to overcome the long years in which the poem has been a text, to regain some sense of the poem as performance. I have claimed that the poet had a word for “performance” in the sense of authoritative self-presentation to an audience. I used this word—… Read more
Bibliography Abrahams, R. 1970. Deep Down in the Jungle, Rev. ed. Chicago: Aldine. ———. 1976. “The Complex Relations of Simple Forms.” In Ben-Amos 1976, pp. 193–214 ———. 1983. The Man-of-Words in the West Indies: Performance and the Emergence of Creole Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press ———. 1985. Review of Jeff Opland, Xhosa Oral Poetry. Poetics Today 6, 553–58. Adkins, A. 1960. “‘Honour’… Read more
Conclusion {263|264} After defining the essential semantic features of the participants in choral performances by women, an examination of their morphology clarified the relations that unite the members of this type of lyric group. The hierarchical relations uniting each of the chorus-members to the choregos (male or female) is doubled in the ties of equality that link these same chorus-members. These relationships were realized in the activity… Read more
Bibliography Ahrens, H. L. “Das alkmanische partheneion des papyrus,” Philologus 27, 1868, pp. 241–285 and 577–629. Allen, T. W. (et al.). The Homeric Hymns, Oxford 21936. Aloni, A. L’aedo e i tiranni: Ricerche sull’ Inno omerico ad Apollo, Roma 1989. Arrigoni, G. “Donne e sport nel mondo greco: Religione e società,” in G. Arrigoni… Read more
Acknowledgments I offer my warmest thanks to Ryan Hackney, Casey Dué, and Christopher Dadian, to whom I am grateful for all their help in editing the final version of my text. I am also very grateful to Joycelyn Peyton, who created the index. I dedicate this book to my students, who inspire my research. Cover illustration: close-up from the Venetus A showing the first five verses… Read more
Introduction [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] I§1 The Homer of Homer’s Text and Language is a… Read more
1. The Quest for a Definitive Text of Homer: Evidence from the Homeric Scholia and Beyond* 1§1 As of this writing, Homeric scholarship has not yet succeeded in achieving a definitive text of either the Iliad or the Odyssey. Ideally, such a text would encompass the full historical reality of the Homeric textual tradition as it evolved through time, from the pre-Classical… Read more
2. The Homeric Text and Problems of Multiformity* 2§1 The multiformity of Homeric poetry is a sign of its prehistory as oral traditional poetry. This insight stems from the work of Milman Parry [1] and Albert Lord. [2] Multiformity, according to Lord, is a basic feature of oral traditional poetry. [… Read more
