The Center for Hellenic Studies

Pindar
Curated Books

Phraseologie und indogermanische Dichtersprache in der Sprache der griechischen Chorlyrik: Pindar und Bakchylides

The subject of this work is the phraseology and poetic language that are documented in Pindar (518-446 BC) and Bakchylides (516-452 BC), have parallels in other poetic traditions, and can in part prove to be inherited. Phraseology is the way in which phraseological units (individual words or groups of words) are combined in the oral or written language. In any study of phraseology, the first thing to consider is how… Read more

Curated Articles

Poetics of authorial, rhythmic, and gendered identities: The subject of discourse in Pindar’s Theban partheneion

École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Centre AnHiMA, Paris (translated by Sean Harrigan, Yale University) 1968: key-date in the development of the humanities among francophone scholars. In 1968 Roland Barthes publishes a brief essay on literary texts in modernity under the heading “la mort d’auteur.” In literature, in the act of writing, it is now “le langage qui parle, ce n’est pas l’auteur”; “écrire, c’est, à travers une impersonnalité… Read more

Curated Articles

Copies and Models in Horace Odes 4.1 and 4.2

[The printed version of this essay was published over 20 years ago in Classical World 87 (1994) 415–426. The online version, as presented here in 2015, replicates almost word for word the content of the original version, indicating the original pagination by way of braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{415|416}” indicates where p. 415 of the printed version ends and p. 416 begins. In this online version, I add… Read more

Curated Books

Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past

Nagy challenges the widely held view that the development of lyric poetry in Greece represents the rise of individual innovation over collective tradition. Arguing that Greek lyric represents a tradition in its own right, Nagy shows how the form of Greek epic is in fact a differentiation of forms found in Greek lyric. Throughout, he progressively broadens the definition of lyric to the point where it becomes the basis for… Read more

Curated Articles

“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

Publications

Pindar's Verbal Art: An Ethnographic Study of Epinician Style

Available Online Now Pindar’s Verbal Art: An Ethnographic Study of Epinician Style by James Bradley Wells In Pindar’s Verbal Art, James Bradley Wells argues that the victory song is a traditional art form that appealed to a popular audience and served exclusive elite interests through the inclusive appeal of entertainment, popular instruction, and laughter. This is the first study of Pindar’s language that applies performance as a method for… Read more

Publications

Pindar’s Verbal Art: An Ethnographic Study of Epinician Style

Available Online Now Pindar’s Verbal Art: An Ethnographic Study of Epinician Style by James Bradley Wells In Pindar’s Verbal Art, James Bradley Wells argues that the victory song is a traditional art form that appealed to a popular audience and served exclusive elite interests through the inclusive appeal of entertainment, popular instruction, and laughter. This is the first study of Pindar’s language that applies performance as a method for… Read more

Hellenic Studies Series

Pindar’s Verbal Art: An Ethnographic Study of Epinician Style

In Pindar’s Verbal Art, James Bradley Wells argues that the victory song is a traditional art form that appealed to a popular audience and served exclusive elite interests through the inclusive appeal of entertainment, popular instruction, and laughter. This is the first study of Pindar’s language that applies performance as a method for the ethnographic description and interpretation of entextualized records of verbal art. In Mikhail Bakhtin’s terms, Pindar’s Verbal Art is a sociological stylistics… Read more