[This text is the English-language version of a lecture I delivered 2011.04.06 on the occasion of my induction as a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens. The lecture was then published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Athens in 2011, Volume 86 Second Issue (2011) pages 81–96. It is republished here with the permission of the Academy. The original pagination of the article will be indicated in this… Read more
Problems and method The lament for the dead is essentially functional. It is only one part of a complex tradition of ritual customs and beliefs. To understand the nature of its development in Greek tradition, and to determine the extent of its continuity from ancient to modern times, it must therefore be studied not in isolation but as an integral part of the ritual to which it belongs. This raises… Read more
Margaret Alexiou’s The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, first published in 1974, has long since been established as a classic in several fields. This is the only generic and diachronic study of learned and popular lament and its socio-cultural contexts throughout Greek tradition in which a great diversity of sources are integrated to offer a comprehensive and penetrating synthesis. Its interdisciplinary orientation and broad scope have rendered The Ritual Lament in Greek… Read more
2017.06.10 [The online version of this presentation as published here on the website of the Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS), http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:Nagy.Diachronic_Homer_and_a_Cretan_Odyssey.2017, replicates the contents of another online version as published in Oral Tradition 31/1 (2017) 3–50. The proper URL citation for that version is http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/31i/nagy. I am most grateful to the Editor of Oral Tradition for giving permission to the CHS to publish a replicated version. The differences… Read more
[This article was originally published as Chapter 14 of The Archaeology of Greece and Rome: Studies in Honour of Anthony Snodgrass, edited by John Bintliff and Keith Rutter, 337–357, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. It appears here 6 months after the print publication by agreement with University of Edinburgh Press.] In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}”… Read more
Carl Lindahl Most who pause to commemorate the first half-century of The Singer of Tales will remember, vividly, how they first made its acquaintance. Fifty years since The Singer of Tales marks forty-four since I was introduced to Albert Lord, from the distance of the back row of a Harvard lecture hall where he orchestrated the appearances of other great scholars—Theodore Andersson, David Bynum, Charles W. Dunn, Einar Haugan, Thorkild… Read more
J.C.B. Petropoulos examines the description of midsummer in Hesiod’s Works and Days, explores modern Greek agrarian practices and relevant folk beliefs, proverbs, symbols, and songs, and cautiously attempts a ‘backward extrapolation’. With the help of comparative ethnographic models, readers will not only better appreciate the seasonal settings of Hesiod’s harvest and its midsummer aftermath, but also will obtain a provocative sidelight into the local song traditions and general lore that… Read more
Second, online edition (2017) of a thesis presented to the Department of Classics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts April 1, 1977. Read more
Bibliography Bibliographical Abbreviations BA = Best of the Achaeans, Nagy 1979/1999. DGE = Schwyzer 1923. GMP = Greek Mythology and Poetics, Nagy 1990b. H24H = The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, Nagy 2013 HC = Homer the Classic, Nagy 2009|2008 HPC = Homer the Preclassic, Nagy 2010|2009 HQ = Homeric Questions, Nagy 1996b HR = Homeric Responses, Nagy 2003 LSJ = Liddell, H. G., R. Scott, and H. S. Read more
