The Center for Hellenic Studies

PUBLICATIONS

Curated Articles

The Pygmies in the Cage: The Function of the Sublime in Longinus

[[This essay was originally published in Literary Study, Measurement, and the Sublime: Disciplinary Assessment (eds. D. Heiland and L. J. Rosenthal).]] In memory of Robert F. Goheen The editors of the volume have posed powerful questions, ones that go to the heart of the experience of reading and teaching literature. Are those experiences so “sublime” that they are beyond systematic analysis? Are they “ineffable?” The author of the ancient… Read more

Curated Articles

We Must Call the Classics before a Court of Shipwrecked Men

[[This essay was originally published in Classical World 104.4 (2011) 483–493.]] [1] ABSTRACT: What if we put to our texts the injunction of the Spanish intellectual Jose Ortega y Gasset—“We must call the classics before a court of shipwrecked men to answer certain peremptory questions with reference to real life”? The answer that emerges from an investigation of several literary works depicting a shipwrecked person… Read more

Curated Articles

Genre and Occasion

[[This article was first published in 1994 in Mètis: Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens 9–10:11–25. In this online version, the original pagination will be indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{11|12}” indicates where p. 11 of the original article ends and p. 12 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made in previous scholarship to the original printed version of this… Read more

PUBLICATIONS

Madness and Complexity of Morals

Madness—The Complexity of Morals in the Light of Myth and Cult So far, we have seen how mythical parallels function as a kind of commentary, marking sacrilege as such. Now we will have a look at a group of sacrilegious acts that are connected with madness. They, too, have parallels with mythical paradigms, but are also connected to a ritual phenomenon: cultic ecstasy—a dimension which makes the cases in question… Read more

Curated Articles

The Origins of Greek Poetic Language: Review (part II) of M. L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford 2007)

[This online 2010 edition is a revised, expanded version of a review first published in Classical Review 60 (2010) 333–338. The original page-numbers of the printed version are embedded within brackets in this electronic version: for example, {333|334} marks where p. 333 stops and p. 334 begins.] West’s book is most useful for researchers in the Classics and in the newer academic discipline of Indo-European studies. I have produced two… Read more

Curated Articles

The ‘New Sappho’ Reconsidered in the Light of the Athenian Reception of Sappho

[[This article was originally published as chapter 13 (= pp. 176-199) in E. Greene and M. Skinner, eds., 2010, The New Sappho on Old Age: Textual and Philosophical Issues (Washington DC and Cambridge MA). It also appears in the online journal Classics@ Volume 4, edited by Ellen Greene and Marilyn Skinner. In this online version, the original page-numbers of the
 printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For… Read more

Curated Articles

Transmission of Archaic Greek Sympotic Songs: From Lesbos to Alexandria

[[This essay was originally published in 2004 in Critical Inquiry 31:26–48. In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{26|27}” indicates where p. 26 of the printed version ends and p. 27 begins.]] This inquiry centers on the transmission of sympotic songs attributed to Alcaeus of Mytilene, a city on the island of Lesbos. The starting point of… Read more

PUBLICATIONS

J. Marks, Zeus in the Odyssey

Online edition of Hellenic Studies 31, originally published in 2008 by the Trustees for Harvard University. Copyright, Center for Hellenic Studies. Also available for purchase in print via Harvard University Press here. Read more