Nine Essays on Homer

The essays in this collections address questions of intense interest in Homeric studies today: the questions of performance and poet-audience interaction especially as depicted in idealized performances within the Iliad and the Odyssey; the ways in which epic incorporates material of diverse genres such as women's laments blame poetry or folk tales; how the ideological balance of epic can change and be influenced by 'alternative ideologies' introduced through the incorporation of new material; the implications of the continuity of tradition for etymological studies; and how the traditional nature of epic affects textual criticism. The essays differ in focus and method but all share one fundamental approach to Homer: an understanding of the Homeric tradition as a poetic system that expresses and preserves what is culturally important and a view of the Homeric epics as instances of a cultural tradition which they attempt to explore through the epics themselves and through the comparative anthropological and linguistic evidence they bring to bear on these texts. A unique collection that explores Homeric poetry through a variety of tools and approaches-linguistics philology cultural anthropology sociology textual criticism and archeology-this volume will be of interest to all scholars and students of oral poetry and Classical literature.