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Gregory Nagy, The ancient Greek hero in 24 hours: Introduction to the book

Introduction to the book The readings 00§1. The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours is based on a course that I have taught at Harvard University ever since the late 1970s. This course, “Concepts of the Hero in Greek Civilization,” centers on selected readings of texts, all translated from the original Greek into English. The texts include the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey; the Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days; selected… Read more

Donum natalicium

A Magnificent Birthday Party in an Artful Pavilion: Lifestyle and Leadership in Euripides’ Ion (on and off stage)

back Lucia Athanassaki, University of Crete Γρηγόρι’, ὦ φίλε, σοὶ Λουκία συνήδομ’ ἑταίρωι ὀγδoίης δεκάδος δοῦσα τόδ’ ἀρχομένωι 0§1 Euripides’ Ion is a play about identity, citizenship and leadership. These interrelated issues, fiercely debated throughout the play, receive an authoritative answer from Athena who appears ex machina and proclaims Ion the son of Apollo and Creusa, rightful ruler of Athens, progenitor of the Ionians, and half-brother of the… Read more

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Performance

back Graeme Bird Dear Greg, A few words of explanation about the video, although I hope it can stand on its own. Needless to say, the video is a visual “transcript” of a performance that deals with performance, with all of its inherent spontaneity and unexpectedness (and a couple of goofy jokes!), but it also, I hope, conveys a sense of fun and creative energy. My young… Read more

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The Literary Value of the Homeric Work of G. Nagy

back Thomas R. Walsh [The following remarks are meant as a contribution to a gift. I set aside much scholarly apparatus in the interest of presenting hypotheses that are worth exploring. In that spirit, I begin anecdotally, and then continue with a discussion of Greg Nagy’s solution to the problem of the duals in Iliad 9. I add some elaboration on why I think the solution is primarily an… Read more

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Notes toward a Traffic in Catalogues

back Laura Slatkin One of the works most widely circulated in antiquity was an extensive hexameter poem that since then has had few admirers or advocates—and not many critics, either. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, largely because of the fragmentary condition in which it has survived to us, discouraged sustained attention, and certainly interpretive speculation, until recent decades. [1] Nothing about the Catalogue is… Read more

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The Concept of the Multimedia Hero in Greek Civilization

back Thomas E. Jenkins I think it’s commonplace for every teacher of Greek to say that they’ve learned Greek twice: once as a student, then again as the teacher, barely keeping one step ahead of the pupils. When I first accepted the position as Teaching Fellow in Greg’s flagship Core Course at Harvard—The Concept of the Hero in Greek Civilization—little did I realize that I would not only learn… Read more

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The Summer Before Austerity (June 2010): The Everyday of a Crisis in the Making

back Soo-Young Kim For histrionic or fanatical stress on the mysterious side of the mysterious takes us no further; we penetrate the mystery only to the degree that we recognize it in the everyday world, by virtue of a dialectical optic that perceives the everyday as impenetrable, the impenetrable as everyday. — Walter Benjamin, “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia” Philology is that venerable art which demands… Read more

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Epic Life: A Return to Nagy (in Game Studies)

back Roger Travis Parts of this essay have appeared in serialized form on the blog Play the Past. Introduction This essay serves three purposes: first, to review the posts of my Rules of the Text (Travis 2012a-e) series on the blog Play the Past, and to recapitulate their argument and its relation to the two examples that have dominated the series: the fantasy novelfranchise A Song of Ice and… Read more