Chapter I: Previous Response The Critical Difference And it ends upNobody’s, there is nothing for any of usExcept that fearful vacillating around the centralQuestion that brings us closer,For better or for worse, for all this time. John Ashbery, Introduction Critical responses to the poem have varied widely. I survey here the most recent and informed readings in… Read more
Chapter II: Performance and Prayer The Role of Difference The surprise of otherness is that moment whena new form of ignorance is suddenly activated as an imperative. Barbara Johnson, A World of Difference Performative language, the subject of J. L. Austin’s How To Do Things With Words, appears prominently in the verb structure of the poem. The first verb… Read more
Chapter III: Invocation and Entreaty The Difference Appears O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger; donot punish me in your wrathFor your arrows have already pierced me;and your hand presses hard againstme. Psalm 38 Throw away thy rod, Throw away thy wrath; O my GodTake the gentle path. George… Read more
Chapter IV: Epiphany The difference enacted So in a voice, so in a shapelesse flameAngells affect us oft, and worshipped bee John Donne, Aire and Angells The epiphany of Aphrodite, like the rest of the poem, has received a variety of critical response. Page’s view is that it contains “much detail irrelevant to [Sappho’s] present theme,” [1]… Read more
Chapter V: The Descent of the Goddess The Apotheosis of Difference Ὣς ἔφασαν κοῦραι μεγάλου Διὸς ἀρτιέπειαι καί μοι σκῆπτρον ἔδον δάφνης ἐριθηλέος ὄζον δρέψασαι, θηητόν· ἐνέπνευσαν δέ μοι ἀυδὴν θέσπιν, ἵνα κλείοιμι τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα… Hesiod, Theogony How is the poetic voice constituted? The question has vexed critics in one form or another from the time poetry became… Read more
Works Cited Austin, J.L. 1955. How to Do Things with Words. Ed. J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. 2nd ed. 1962. Cambridge, MA. Bowra, C.M. 1961. Greek Lyr ic Poetry From Alcman to Simonides. London. Burkert, Walter. 1979. Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley, CA. Burkert, Walter. 1977. Greek Religion. Trans. John… Read more
Foreword Gregory Nagy Epic Singers and Oral Tradition, by Albert B. Lord, is a particularly distinguished entry in the Myth and Poetics series. My goal, as series editor, has been to encourage work that helps to integrate literary criticism with the approaches of anthropology and pays special attention to problems concerning the nexus of ritual and myth. A model of such integration and emphasis is Lord’s… Read more
Acknowledgments I thank the good friends and colleagues who urged me to publish a selection of my papers, especially most recently James Hankins, Richard Janko, and Jan Ziolkowski. I am also grateful to Gregory Nagy for encouragement and for accepting the volume into the series Myth and Poetics of which he is editor. I deeply appreciate his gracious foreword, and thank him for many other kindnesses over… 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.] It is of the nature of things that Homer and… Read more
1. Words Heard and Words Seen* It seems superfluous to remark that in the history of mankind words were heard before they were seen. For the majority of people, as a matter of fact, words still are heard rather than seen, and even those who have learned to visualize words as containing particular letters in a particular sequence continue to operate much… Read more
