PUBLICATIONS
Douglas Frame, Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic
Online edition of Hellenic Studies 37, originally published in 2009 by the Trustees for Harvard University. Copyright, Center for Hellenic Studies. Also available for purchase in printvia Harvard University Press here. This book is about the Homeric figure Nestor. Its results are important because they reveal a level of deliberate irony in the Homeric poems that has hitherto not been suspected, and because Nestor’s role in the poems, which… Read more
The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic
“The main argument of this book is that the connection suggested by Homer between the ‘wiles’ and the ‘wanderings’ of Odysseus in fact rested upon an earlier tradition both significant and deep. The origin of this tradition has to do with the etymology of the Greek word nóos, ‘mind’, which I propose to connect with the Greek verb néomai, ‘return home’. Such an effort requires that nóos be reconstructed as… Read more
L’Épithète Traditionnelle dans Homère: Essai sur un problème de style Homérique
Originally published in 1928, both for Société d’éditions “Les belles lettres” (Paris) and as a minor thesis (Doctorat es lettres) for the Université de Paris. Read more
Gregory Nagy, Homeric Questions
Originally published in 1996 by the University of Texas Press. Copyright, University of Texas Press. Also available for purchase in print here. Read more
Classics@9: Gregory Nagy, Diachrony and the Case of Aesop
Diachrony and the Case of Aesop Gregory Nagy [Also published in print in Diachrony: Diachronic Studies of Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, 2015, ed. José M. González, pp. 233–290. Pagination is herein represented by “{…|…},” indicating where one page ends and another begins. This online version is longer than the printed version due to the fact that, in the printed version, a number of paragraphs have been excised. Such paragraphs are… Read more
El espejo de las Musas: El arte de la descripción en la Ilíada y Odisea
The subject of this book, which is an amplified version of the author’s MA thesis, is the art of description in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The art of description, or ekphrasis, is studied initially in general, seen in conjunction with such basic Homeric issues as formulaic language and similes, but via discussions on Homeric descriptions of nature and agriculture, the book ends up studying Homeric descriptions of arts and… Read more
Homeric Questions
The “Homeric Question” has vexed Classicists for generations. Was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey a single individual who created the poems at a particular moment in history? Or does the name “Homer” hide the shaping influence of the epic tradition during a long period of oral composition and transmission? In this innovative investigation, Gregory Nagy applies the insights of comparative linguistics and anthropology to offer a new historical model for understanding… Read more
The Idea of the Library as a Classical Model for European Culture
This essay treats the ancient library not so much as a place or institution but as an idea or concept—a Classical model, conveyed primarily by metaphors of comprehensiveness, completeness, and universality. [1] The focus is primarily on the Library of Alexandria in Egypt and secondarily on the Library of Pergamon in Asia Minor. I will argue that the model represented by these libraries is a… Read more