Poetry as performance : Homer and beyond / Gregory Nagy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nagy, Gregory.

Contributor:

Center for Hellenic Studies (Washington, D.C.)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Homer--Criticism, Textual.

Homer.

Homer--Technique.

Epic poetry, Greek--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

Epic poetry, Greek.

Epic poetry, Greek--Criticism, Textual.

Criticism, Textual.

Oral interpretation of poetry--History--To 1500.

Oral interpretation of poetry.

Performing arts--Greece--History--To 1500.

Performing arts.

Oral tradition--Greece--History--To 1500.

Oral tradition.

Oral-formulaic analysis.

Transmission of texts.

History.

Technique.

Greece.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 254 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

To understand the emergence of Homeric poetry as an actual written text in ancient Greek civilization, it is essential to trace the history of Homeric performance, from the very beginning of alphabetic literacy in the eighth century BC all the way through the critical era of textual canonizations in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In making this argument, the author applies the comparative evidence of oral poetic traditions, including those that survived in literate societies, such as the Provencal troubadour tradition. From such evidence it appears that a song cannot be fixed as a final written text so long as the oral poetic tradition in which it was created stays alive, potentially re-creating ever new versions of the 'same' song. So also with Homeric poetry, it is argued that no single definitive text could evolve until the oral traditions in which the epic was grounded became obsolete. In the watershed era of Aristarchus, around 150 BC, the gradual movement from relatively more fluid to more rigid stages of Homeric transmission reached a near-final point of textualization.

Contents:

pt. I. Mimesis and the making of identity in poetic performance. 1. The Homeric nightingale and the poetics of variation in the art of a troubadour. 2. Mimesis, models of singers, and the meaning of a Homeric epithet. 3. Mimesis of Homer and beyond. 4. Mimesis in lyric: Sappho's Aphrodite and the Changing Woman of the Apache

pt. II. Fixed text in theory, shifting words in performance. 5. Multiform epic and Aristarchus' quest for the real Homer. 6. Homer as script. 7. Homer as "scripture"

Epilogue: dead poets and recomposed performers.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-247) and index.

Print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Nagy, Gregory. Poetry as performance.

OCLC:

605395289