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,… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… Read more
