Poetry in Speech : Orality and Homeric Discourse / Egbert J. Bakker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bakker, Egbert J., author.

Contributor:

Bakker, Egbert J., Contributor.

Nagy, Gregory, Contributor.

en Book Program, funder.

Series:

Myth and poetics.

Myth and Poetics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Homer--Criticism and interpretation.

Homer.

Epic poetry, Greek--History and criticism.

Epic poetry, Greek.

Poetics--History--To 1500.

Poetics.

Discourse analysis, Literary.

Oral-formulaic analysis.

Oral tradition--Greece.

Oral tradition.

Speech in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (240 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cornell University Press 2018

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Egbert J. Bakker is Professor of Classics at Yale University. He is the author of many books, including Pointing at the Past: From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics and The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey.

Summary:

Applying linguistic theory to the study of Homeric style, Egbert J. Bakker offers a highly innovative approach to oral poetry, particularly the poetry of Homer. By situating formulas and other features of oral style within the wider contexts of spoken language and communication, he moves the study of oral poetry beyond the landmark work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord.One of the book's central features, related to the research of the linguist Wallace Chafe, is Bakker's conception of spoken discourse as a sequence of short speech units reflecting the flow of speech through the consciousness of the speaker. Bakker shows that such short speech units are present in Homeric poetry, with significant consequences for Homeric metrics and poetics. Considering Homeric discourse as a speech process rather than as the finished product associated with written discourse, Bakker's book offers a new perspective on Homer as well as on other archaic Greek texts. Here Homeric discourse appears as speech in its own right, and is freed, Bakker suggests, from the bias of modern writing style which too easily views Homeric discourse as archaic, implicitly taking the style of classical period texts as the norm. Bakker's perspective reaches beyond syntax and stylistics into the very heart of Homeric-and, ultimately, oral-poetics, altering the status of key features such as meter and formula, rethinking their relevance to the performance of Homeric poetry, and leading to surprising insights into the relation between "speech" and "text" in the encounter of the Homeric tradition with writing.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword / Nagy, Gregory

Acknowledgments / Bakker, Egbert J.

Introduction

PART ONE. PERSPECTIVES

CHAPTER I. The Construction of Orality

CHAPTER 2. The Writing of Homer

PART TWO. SPEECH

CHAPTER 3. Consciousness and Cognition

CHAPTER 4. The Syntax of Movement

CHAPTER 5. Homeric Framings

PART THREE. SPECIAL SPEECH

CHAPTER 6. Rhythm and Rhetoric

CHAPTER 7. Epithets and Epic Epiphany

CHAPTER 8. The Grammar of Poetry

Speech and Text: A Conclusion

Bibliography

Index Locorum

General Index

MYTH AND POETICS

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Sep 2018)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501722776

1501722778

OCLC:

1028942843