epic

Kyklos 2023

Kyklos is a program that represents an ever-regenerated discourse on the Greek Epic Cycle (Greek Kyklos) and it is devoted to new and developing scholarship on the subject. Read more

Wild Songs, Sweet Songs: The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord

In the 1930s, Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord, two pioneering scholars of oral poetry, conducted adventurous fieldwork in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and northern Albania, collecting singularly important examples of Albanian epic song. Wild Songs, Sweet Songs presents these materials, which have not previously been published, for the first time. Nicola Scaldaferri and his collaborators provide a complete catalogue of the Albanian texts and recordings collected by Parry and Lord; a selection… Read more

Review of Robin Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer (London: Allen Lane, 2008)

[This article is a draft of a review later published in Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011) 166–169 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426911000127). Page numbers for that publication have been added in curly brackets. For instance, {166|167} indicates the break between pages 166 and 167.] For the author (hereafter LF), the ‘epic age of Homer’ is the 8th c. (here and hereafter, all dates are BCE). The word ‘travelling’ refers to… Read more

Hero Cult in Apollonius Rhodius

[[This article was originally published in 2012 in Gods and Religion in Hellenistic Poetry (edited by M. A. Harder, R. F. Regtuit, and G. C. Wakker) 131-162, Peeters Publishers: Leuven. The page-numbers of the printed version are embedded within braces in this electronic version: for example, {131|132} marks where p. 131 ends and p. 132 begins.]] The divinity of heroes, and the cult honors they received in the Greek world,… Read more

“Dream of a Shade”: Refractions of Epic Vision in Pindar’s Pythian 8 and Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes

[[This is an electronic version of an article that appeared in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 100 (2000) 97–118. In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{97|98}” indicates where p. 97 of the printed version ends and p. 98 begins.]] This essay explores the idea of epic in relative rather than absolute terms, with specific reference to… Read more

“Mixed Aorists” in Homeric Greek

“The Homeric poems provide some of the easiest reading in Greek literature, as well as some of the most rewarding, and so we are introduced to them at an early stage in our study of the language. But when we learn more, we discover that Homeric Greek is not so simple after all. Some of its phenomena remain unexplained after two millennia of scholarship. For instance, we come across imperatives… Read more

Epic

[[This essay is a 2010 online version of an original printed version that appeared as Chapter 1 in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature, ed. Richard Eldridge (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009) 19-44. In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{19|20}” indicates where p. 19 of the printed version ends and p. 20 begins.]] What is… Read more