The Center for Hellenic Studies

intertextuality
News, Publications

Homeric Variations: Interview with Classicist and Jazz Musician Graeme Bird, Gordon College

Graeme Bird and a student from Gordon College examine an 1800-year-old Homeric papyrus.Photo Credit: Cyndi McMahon, Gordon College   "True improvisation has nothing really to do with “making stuff up on the spot”; rather it is the creative and inspired weaving together of previously rehearsed material…" --Graeme Bird We recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with professor, musician, and CHS author Graeme D. Bird about his work on ancient Homeric papyri, jazz improvisation, and the surprising intersections between the two. Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics

Oral intertextuality is an innate feature of the web of myth, whose interrelated fabrics allow the audience of epic song to have access to an entire horizon of diverse variants of a story. The Oral Palimpsest argues that just as the erased text of a palimpsest still carries traces of its previous writing, so the Homeric tradition unfolds its awareness of alternative versions in the act of producing the signs of their… Read more