Chapters

Book Chapter

5. Vico’s Homer Makes the Greco-Roman Continuum Possible

5. Vico’s Homer Makes the Greco-Roman Continuum Possible If Vico’s program in the Scienza Nuova entails using iconography to divert pan-European discourse away from the Quarrel in order to proceed toward establishing an anti-Cartesian empirical model, what is the immediate target of his resulting new “ray”? Giuseppe Mazzotta gives this answer: “La discoverta del vero Omero” unfolds by telling about a deliberate reversal of the most… Read more

Book Chapter

4. Evolutionary Models Resist Literary Bias

4. Evolutionary Models Resist Literary Bias Something that has always struck me as I have studied Nagy’s work is how resistant many of his colleagues have been to what is perhaps the most important aspect of his model: namely, that it is faithful to the theories of his predecessor Albert Lord in treating the transmission of epic as a primarily creative rather than a simply mnemonic tekhnē,… Read more

Book Chapter

3. Book III: Vico’s “Empirical” Homer(s)

3. Book III: Vico’s “Empirical” Homer(s) Again, Book III represents the polemical fulcrum of Vico’s response to The Homeric Question. Its specific raison d’être is the promise he has made (primarily in “The Idea of the Work”) that through the anti-Cartesian method of his “new science” he wil argue that behind the received Homeric icon—the synchronic, historical, majestically authoritative figure depicted throughout the classical corpus—has lain hidden… Read more

Book Chapter

2. Vico’s Homeric Ékphrasis

2. Vico’s Homeric Ékphrasis What, exactly, is Vico hoping to accomplish by including his perspective on the Homeric Question in his historical argument in the Scienza Nuova? At first blush, the subject of Homer does not fit that naturally within his greater forensic framework (cf. Aristotle’s ideal, as he expresses it in the opening of the Poetics, 1447a10: legômen … kata phusin, “let us discourse … in… Read more

Book Chapter

1. Prophet of Modern Oral-Evolutionary Theories

1. Prophet of Modern Oral-Evolutionary Theories In this essay, I shall be examining the cultural and historical theories of Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), as he applies them to Homer. I shall focus particularly on the daring arguments through which Vico constructs a detailed scientific answer to the so-called “Homeric Question.” He elaborates most fully upon this “revelation” in Book III of Principi di Scienza Nuova d’intorno alla comune… Read more

Book Chapter

Epigraph

Vico’s Prescient Evolutionary Model for Homer Steven M. Berry Verisimilia namque vera inter et falsa sunt quasi media. “For indeed, probabilities [i.e., things that seem true] are midway, more or less, between true things and false things.” – Giambattista Vico, De nostri temporis Studiorum Ratione (1709) Tutte l’antiche storie profane hanno favolosi in princìpi. “All the profane stories of antiquity were… Read more

Book Chapter

Selected Bibliography

Selected Bibliography Albano-Leoni, F. 1968. “Su alcune corrispondenze formulari omerico-vediche.” Orientalia Suecana 17:137–154. Allen, A., and Frel, J. 1972. “A Date for Corinna.” Classical Journal 68:26–30. Allen, W. S. 1966. “Prosody and Prosodies in Greek.” Transactions of the Philological Society 1966:107–148. ———. 1967. “Correlations of Tone and Stress in Ancient Greek.” To Honor Roman… Read more

Book Chapter

Appendix B. Dovetailing: Speculations on Mechanics and Origins

Appendix B. Dovetailing: Speculations on Mechanics and Origins Glyconics, among other Greek meters, ‘dovetail’ forward. [1] That is, the word-break at the end of one Glyconic can be skipped and transferred to the position after the first long/short (⏓) of a following Glyconic: regular pattern 1̄̆ 2̄̆ 3̄ 4̆ 5̆ 6̄ 7̆ 8̄̆||1̄̆ 2̄̆ 3̄ 4̆ 5̆ 6̄ 7̆ 8̄̆ … Read more

Book Chapter

Appendix A. μήδεα and ἄφθιτα μήδεα εἰδώc

Appendix A. μήδεα and ἄφθιτα μήδεα εἰδώc Within the framework of Homeric diction, the noun μήδεα can mean either ‘thoughts, schemes’ (as in Γ 202) or ‘genitals’ (as in σ 67). There are many typological parallels to such a semantic ambivalence in μήδεα. For example, Old High German gimaht may mean either ‘faculty’ or ‘genitals’. Notice too that the Greek word for ‘sexual coming of age’, ἥβη,… Read more

Book Chapter

Epilogue: The Hidden Meaning of κλέοc ἄφθιτον and śráva(s) ákṣitam

Epilogue: The Hidden Meaning of κλέοc ἄφθιτον and śráva(s) ákṣitam Having reconstructed a poetic expression which antedates even the meters in which it is preserved, we may well wonder about its traditional impact. What implicit message did the expression *klewos n̥dhgwhitom contain? What strength of heritage propelled it to survive in two such distantly related poetic systems as the Greek and the Indic? As I… Read more