Chapter 6: Storytelling in the Future The question whether the Greek epic tradition is a matter of “truth” or of “fiction” remains a central issue in Homeric scholarship, and any answer to it betrays one’s stance with regard to a host of other issues, such as text, tradition, and authorship. Opinions are divided as to whether the Homeric rendition of the heroic past is wholly traditional, and… Read more
Chapter 7. Similes, Augment, and the Language of Immediacy Any function we assign to the Homeric simile has to take into account the fact that similes evoke a reality that is different from that of narrative proper. As many commentators have noted, similes are “close” to the audience, in evoking a domestic, rather than heroic, reality. [1] Yet instead of exploring the… Read more
Chapter 8. Remembering the God’s Arrival “What’s remembered goes on living and can happen again.” Mario Vargas Llosa, The Storyteller The Homeric Hymn to Apollo is commonly believed by scholars to consist of two parts, one Delian, dealing with the god’s birth and his cult at Delos, and one Pythian, describing the foundation of his shrine at Delphi. Read more
Chapter 9. Mohammed and the Mountain In Chapter Fifteen of the treatise On the Sublime we find a discussion of the imagination and of visualization as sources of grandeur and dignity in literature. The key term is phantasia. This term applies “when by an effect of enthusiasm and passion you seem actually to see what you are saying, so placing it before your listeners’ eyes.” [… Read more
Bibliography Alexanderson, Bengt. 1970. “Homeric Formulae for Ships.” Eranos 68: 1–46. Auerbach, Erich. 1953. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. W. R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Austin, Norman. 1966. “The Function of Digressions in the Iliad.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7: 295–312. Repr. 1978. Essays on the Iliad: Selected Modern Criticism, ed. J. Read more
Acknowledgments While a number of scholars have had a defining role in this book coming to fruition, certainly the most influential of all is my Oxford supervisor, Professor Averil Cameron. Her gentle yet directed guidance has been invaluable to me along the road of learning how to do scholarship. Although it goes without saying that any errors of fact or interpretation in this book are my own,… Read more
Abbreviations ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols. (New York, 1992) ABzF Acta Byzantina Fennica ACW Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation (New York) AJP American Journal of Philology AnBoll Analecta Bollandiana ANRW J. Vogt et al., eds. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (Berlin and New York, 1972–) ATh Acts of Paul and Thekla (for critical text,… Read more
Chapter 1. One-on-One Conversations (Odyssey) Chapters 1-3 focus on one-on-one conversations. In the most basic form of one-on-one conversation, two speakers alternate without either events in the story or comments from the narrator intervening between one speech and the next. All the conversations that appear in these chapters depart from that model. I will be focusing on conversations that depart from this pattern in that they contain… Read more
Chapter 2. One-on-one Conversations (Odysseus and Penelope) The story of Penelope and Odysseus and their drawn-out reunion over the course of the last third of the Odyssey is one of the most extensively studied portions of the Homeric epics. [1] The gradual rapprochement between Penelope and Odysseus, stretching over several books of the Odyssey, contains two major movements or sections, one in… Read more
Chapter 3. One-on-one Conversations (Iliad) The Odyssey, as we have seen, uses conversation to dramatize the conflict between honesty and concealment that underlies Odysseus’ various reunions on Ithaca and indeed, much of the social interaction in the poem as a whole. The Iliad, too, uses one-on-one conversations to depict significant themes and types of social interactions. However, both the areas toward which conversation in the Iliad directs… Read more
