The Center for Hellenic Studies

Books
Hellenic Studies Series

In Her Own Words: The Life and Poetry of Aelia Eudocia

In Her Own Words: The Life and Poetry of Aelia Eudocia is the first full-length study to examine Eudocia’s writings as a unified whole and to situate them within their wider fifth-century literary, social, and religious contexts. Responsible for over 3,000 lines of extant poetry, Eudocia is one of the best-preserved ancient female poets. Because she wrote in a literary mode frequently suppressed by proto-orthodox (male) leaders, much of… Read more

Curated Books

Rhythm without Beat: Prosodically Motivated Grammarisation in Homer

In this study, the author argues that syntactical development beyond the autonomy of single words or word groups was facilitated by an aspect of Homeric prosody that differs from the metrical surface structure, though it is realized together with meter. The focus will be on the strength of metrical boundaries as phonetically realized pauses. This work will deal, in other words, with the combination of metrics and phonetics. The… Read more

Donum natalicium

Anthroponymica Mycenaea: e-ti-me-de-i (dat.) /hEnti-mēdēs/ ‘(the one) who accomplished his plans’, Homeric ἐξήνυσε βουλάς

back José L. García Ramón (Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC) 1. The Pylian man’s name e-ti-me-de-i (dat.) occurs in PY Fn 324.1 (S324, Ciii), a tablet of contributions of barley (HORD, with indication of the quantities) beside a series of names.* Some of them, all in dative, are surely Greek, [1] among others a-ka-ma-jo .4 /Akmaiōi/ or /Alkmaiōi/ (:… Read more

Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Series

Old Norse Mythology—Comparative Perspectives

Old Norse mythology is elusive: it is the label used to describe the religious stories of the pre-Christian North, featuring such well-known gods as Odin and Thor, yet most of the narratives have come down to us in manuscripts from the Middle Ages mainly written by Christians. Our view of the stories as they were transmitted in oral form in the pre-Christian era is obscured. To overcome these… Read more

Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Series

The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition: A Discourse on Method

This work explores the role of orality in shaping and evaluating medieval Icelandic literature. Applying field studies of oral cultures in modern times to this distinguished medieval literature, Gísli Sigurðsson asks how it would alter our reading of medieval Icelandic sagas if it were assumed they had grown out of a tradition of oral storytelling, similar to that observed in living cultures. Sigurðsson examines how orally trained lawspeakers regarded the… Read more

Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Series

Embroidered with Gold, Strung with Pearls: The Traditional Ballads of Bosnian Women

Bosnian traditional ballads have intrigued many by their beauty and eloquence, from Goethe’s poetic interest in them in the eighteenth century to the work of twentieth-century scholars such as Milman Parry and Albert Lord. These songs are now available to the English reader in a bilingual edition offering a selection of never before translated or published materials from Harvard University’s Parry Collection. The forty oral ballads, many appearing in… Read more

Curated Books

The Origins of the Goddess Ariadne

Second, online edition of a thesis presented to the Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 27 March 1970. Read more

Curated Books

The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition

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… Read more