Leonard Muellner back to Homerizon Conference main page Discovery Procedures and Principles for Homeric Philological Research The past 100 years have brought new perspectives and new methods to the study of Homeric poetry, several of which affect our understanding of the poems in the most basic ways. For the philologist working on the meaning of individual words, at least two are especially important: the enhanced understanding we have acquired… Read more
Richard Martin back to Homerizon Conference main page Cretan Homers: Tradition, Politics, Fieldwork The notion of horizon requires us to think of perspective, and that, in turn, means we must consider the place from which one looks. In this paper, I gaze at the distant prospect of Homer — whether that phenomenon “Homer” be a line or an object, a particle or a wave — from one place:… Read more
Johannes Haubold back to Homerizon Conference main page Homer between East and West There has been a growing trend in Homeric studies to investigate the connections between Homeric epic and the so-called ‘Ancient Near East’. In this paper I reflect on the nature of this trend, as well as proposing a new approach to some of the issues it raises. My argument is in three parts. In a… Read more
Constanze Güthenke back to Homerizon Conference main page The Philhellenic Horizon: Homeric Prolegomena to the Greek War of Independence Based on what Richard Armstrong and Casey Dué, in the invitation to this conference, termed the Wolfian paradigm of Homeric research and its intersection with the preoccupations of the Romantic period (ballads; nature; language; nation; nostalgia; modernity), this paper examines the role of Homer within the horizon… Read more
Barbara Graziosi back to Homerizon Conference main page Homer and the Definition of Epic Epic, as a genre, is defined using many different criteria, from mode of discourse (although some epics are not predominantly narrative), length (though some epics are short), relationship to other genres (though not all epics incorporate minor genres), subject matter (though not all epics involve war or travel), theological framework (though not all… Read more
Doug Frame back to Homerizon Conference main page The Homeric Poems after Ionia: A Case in Point The general topic of this paper is the reception of the Homeric poems in mainland Greece after their substantial formation in Ionia in the late eighth and early seventh centuries B.C. The case in point is Sparta in the late seventh and early sixth centuries B.C. in the aftermath of the… Read more
Mary Ebbott back to Homerizon Conference main page Butler’s Authoress and gendered readings of the Odyssey How do or should considerations of gender affect our interpretation of Homeric poetry? This is the central question in my article. I explore it by examining Samuel Butler’s 1897 book The Authoress of the Odyssey and then various interpretations of the Odyssey from the past 15 years that also focus on gender. Read more
Casey Dué back to Homerizon Conference main page The Invention of Ossian In this paper I argue that by exploring James Macpherson’s alleged “invention” of the ancient Celtic bard Ossian Homerists can learn something about the way that contemporary theory about the nature of poetry influences our scholarly attempts to objectively analyze the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. I will summarize briefly here the Macpherson controversy before moving on… Read more
Jonathan S. Burgess back to Homerizon Conference main page Tumuli of Achilles Achilles died at Troy and was buried there, ancient myth and poetry agree. After his corpse was burned on a pyre, a great tomb, or tumulus, was heaped up over his bones. But the tumulus of Achilles is not just a mythological motif; it has also been regarded as a real piece of topography in the landscape… Read more
Ellen Bradshaw Aitken Back to Homerizon Conference main page An Early Christian Homerizon? Decoy, Direction, and Doxology In the first centuries of the development of Christianity, the Homeric poems and Homeric traditions continued to occupy a central place in Hellenistic and Roman cultural arenas. This paper explores some of the “Homeric horizons” evident in texts from the formative period of ancient Christianity (first through third centuries C.E.). It focuses… Read more
