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Q&A with Anna Bonifazi

We recently had a chance to talk with Anna Bonifazi about her research, Homeric diction, and her new book, Homer's Verisicolored Fabric: The Evocative Power of Ancient Greek Epic Wordmaking. CHS: Your book examines two main subjects: 1) the pronominalization of Odysseus as ἐκεῖνος and as αὐτός 2) the treatment of particles and adverbs deriving from αὐ- and from αὐτός with a focus on the notion of discourse markers. Why was it important to consider these two subjects together? Bonifazi: There is a specific and a general reason. The specific one is that the au- adverbs I discuss and autos share some discourse functions (which supports the hypothesis that autos derives from *au-, by the way); sometimes grammatical distinctions do not help identifying cognate significances. The general reason is that both groups of words are particularly sensitive to the context of their utterance; far from having a stable (univocal) meaning, they contribute, together with their verbal environs, to signal different communicative intentions, a situation which prompts purposive rather than mechanical usages. Read more

News, Publications

Q&A with Anna Bonifazi

We recently had a chance to talk with Anna Bonifazi about her research, Homeric diction, and her new book, Homer's Verisicolored Fabric: The Evocative Power of Ancient Greek Epic Wordmaking. CHS: Your book examines two main subjects: 1) the pronominalization of Odysseus as ἐκεῖνος and as αὐτός 2) the treatment of particles and adverbs deriving from αὐ- and from αὐτός with a focus on the notion of discourse markers. Why was it important to consider these two subjects together? Bonifazi: There is a specific and a general reason. The specific one is that the au- adverbs I discuss and autos share some discourse functions (which supports the hypothesis that autos derives from *au-, by the way); sometimes grammatical distinctions do not help identifying cognate significances. The general reason is that both groups of words are particularly sensitive to the context of their utterance; far from having a stable (univocal) meaning, they contribute, together with their verbal environs, to signal different communicative intentions, a situation which prompts purposive rather than mechanical usages. Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

Homer’s Versicolored Fabric: The Evocative Power of Ancient Greek Epic Word-Making

Anna Bonifazi suggests that the Homeric text we have now would have enabled ancient audiences to enjoy the evocative power of even minimal linguistic elements. The multiple functions served by these elements are associated not only with the variety of narrative contexts in which they occur but also with overarching poetic strategies. The findings relate to two strategies in particular: unfolding the narrative by signaling the upcoming content with αύ- adverbs… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

From Listeners to Viewers: Space in the Iliad

What do we mean by “space” in the Iliad? The aim of this book is to offer a systematic and comprehensive presentation of the different types and functions of space in the earliest work of Greek literature. By adopting a twofold division between simple and embedded story space, the former pertaining to the actions of characters and the latter to their thoughts, Christos Tsagalis shows how character drawing and authority are deeply influenced… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

The Master of Signs: Signs and the Interpretation of Signs in Herodotus’ Histories

Readers of Herodotus’s histories are familiar with its reports of bizarre portents, riddling oracles, and striking dreams. But Herodotus draws our attention to other types of signs too, beginning with human speech itself as a coded system that can manipulate and be manipulated. Objects, gifts, artifacts, markings, even the human body, are all capable of being invested with meaning in the Histories and Herodotus shows that conventionally and culturally determined… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays

Laura Slatkin’s influential and widely admired book, here published in a second edition together with six additional essays, explores the superficially minor role of Thetis in the Iliad. Highly charged allusions reverberate through the narrative and establish a constellation of themes that link the poem to other traditions. Slatkin uncovers alternative traditions about the power of Thetis and shows how an awareness of those myths brings a far greater understanding of… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

Kleos in a Minor Key: The Homeric Education of a Little Prince

As scholars have remarked, the word kleos in the Iliad and the Odyssey alike refers to something more substantive and complex than “fame” or “glory.” Kleos distinctly supposes an oral narrative—principally an “oral history,” a “life story” or ultimately an “oral tradition.” When broken down into its twin constituents, “words” and “actions” or “deeds,” a hero’s kleos serves to define him as a fully gendered social being. This book is a meditation on this concept as… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

Eve of the Festival: Making Myth in Odyssey 19

Eve of the Festival is a study of Homeric myth-making in the first and longest dialogue of Penelope and Odysseus (Odyssey 19). This study makes a case for seeing virtuoso myth-making as an essential part of this conversation, a register of communication important for the interaction between the two speakers. At the core of the book is a detailed examination of several myths in the dialogue in an attempt to understand… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

Plato’s Counterfeit Sophists

This book explores the place of the sophists within the Greek wisdom tradition, and argues against their almost universal exclusion from serious intellectual traditions. By studying the sophists against the backdrop of the archaic Greek institutions of wisdom, it is possible to detect considerable intellectual overlap between them and their predecessors. This book explores the continuity of this tradition, suggesting that the sophists’ intellectual balkanization in modern scholarship, particularly their… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

A Californian Hymn to Homer

Much as an ancient hymnist carries a familiar subject into new directions of song, the contributors to A Californian Hymn to Homer draw upon Homeric scholarship as inspiration for pursuing new ways of looking at texts, both within the Homeric tradition and outside it. This set of seven original essays, accompanied by a new translation of the Homeric “Hymn to Apollo,” considers topics that transcend traditional generic distinctions between epic and lyric,… Read more