Chapter 3. Heroes as Performers {89} “A work about death often modulates readily, if eerily, into a work about literature. For death inhabits texts.” [1] In the terms of the Iliad, death generates texts; it is the boundary that one tries to surmount by action in this world. A reputation enshrined in poetry, “unwithering fame” (9.413), is the goal for every hero;… Read more
Chapter 2. Heroic Genres of Speaking {43} The notion of “genre” has been described as “the most powerful explanatory tool available to the literary critic.” [1] It has usually been discussed within the confines of literary criticism. With the growth of Modernism and, concurrently, the recognition of non-Western literary traditions, critical assumptions about idealized genres of any sort have had to change. Read more
Chapter 1. Performance, Speech-Act, and Utterance {1} Does it really matter whether or not Homer’s Iliad is a piece of oral poetry? In the final analysis, no. Even if the 15,693 hexameters printed in T. W. Allen’s Oxford Classical Text happen to represent the exact transcription of an actual performance by one “singer of tales” from the eighth century B.C., we still do not have an oral… Read more
Preface [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] To hear the voice which tells the Iliad—that was my… Read more
Foreword Gregory Nagy {ix} The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the “Iliad,” by Richard P. Martin, inaugurates the “Myth and Poetics” series. My goal, as series editor, is to encourage work that will help integrate literary criticism with the approaches of cultural anthropology and that will pay special attention to problems concerning the nexus of ritual and myth. For such an undertaking, we… Read more
Bibliography Allen, T. W. 1924. Homer: The Origins and the Transmission. Oxford. ———, ed. 1931. Homeri Ilias. I–III. Oxford. Allen, W. S. 1973. Accent and Rhythm. Prosodic Features of Latin and Greek: A Study in Theory and Reconstruction. Cambridge. ———. 1987. Vox Graeca: The Pronunciation of Classical Greek. 3rd ed. Cambridge. … Read more
9. Ellipsis in Homeric Poetry* 9§1 This essay concentrates on four questions: (1) What is ellipsis? (2) How does ellipsis work in Homeric songmaking? (3) How does ellipsis typify Homeric songmaking? (4) How does Homeric songmaking use ellipsis to typify itself? A Working Definition 9§2 In the dictionary of Liddell and Scott, the verb elleípō (ἐλλείπω) is defined as (1)… Read more
8. An Etymology for the Dactylic Hexameter* 8§1 In his far-reaching survey of Indo-European poetics, Calvert Watkins remarks: “The origins of the Greek epic meter, the dactylic hexameter, are particularly challenging.” [1] His own contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the hexameter’s derivation is seminal. He writes: “I argued in passing in [Watkins] 1969 [p. 227] for… Read more
7. The Name of Apollo: Etymology and Essence* 7§1 The etymology of Apollo’s name, Apóllōn, has defied linguistic reconstruction for a long time. [1] A breakthrough came with a 1975 article by Walter Burkert, where he proposes that the Doric form of the name, Apéllōn, be connected with the noun apéllai, designating a seasonally recurring festival—an assembly… Read more
6. The Name of Achilles: Questions of Etymology and “Folk-Etymology”* 6§1 In his book on the language of the Linear B tablets, Leonard R. Palmer explained the etymology of the name of Achilles, Ἀχιλ(λ)εύς, as a shortened variant of a compound formation *Akhí-lāu̯os, built from the roots of ἄχος ‘grief’ and of λαός ‘host of fighting men, folk’, morphologically parallel to such… Read more
