Homer: The Poetry of the PastAndrew Ford here addresses, in a manner both engaging and richly informed, the perennial questions of what poetry is, how it came to be, and what it is for. Focusing on the critical moment in Western literature when the heroic tales of the Greek oral tradition began to be preserved in writing, he examines these questions in the light of Homeric poetry. Through fresh readings of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and referring to other early epics as well, Ford deepens our understanding of what poetry was at a time before written texts, before a developed sense of authorship, and before the existence of institutionalized criticism. Placing what is known about Homer's art in the wider context of Homer's world, Ford traces the effects of the oral tradition upon the development of the epic and addresses such issues as the sources of the poet's inspiration and the generic constraints upon epic composition. After exploring Homer's poetic vocabulary and his fictional and mythical representations of the art of singing, Ford reconstructs an idea of poetry much different from that put forth by previous interpreters. Arguing that Homer grounds his project in religious rather than literary or historical terms, he concludes that archaic poetry claims to give a uniquely transparent and immediate rendering of the past. Homer: The Poetry of the Past will be stimulating and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in the traditions of poetry, as well as for students and scholars in the fields of classics, literary theory and literary history, and intellectual history. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 59
... lavish in every respect. Audiences at Brown University and the University of Virginia helped sharpen some of my conclusions, and I thank Michael Putnam and Jenny Strauss Clay for invitations in behalf of those departments. Acknowledgments.
... audiences what it has meant for us. Provoked by Homer, the reader of poetry then turns historian of the idea of poetry and returns to the poems to ask what it was to be a singer of songs in that world. But of course Homer is hardly to ...
... audiences. But this is just where Stevens's reminder that the idea of poetry is not an unchanging Platonic essence becomes indispensable: it is all too clear that poetry is at best a sum of what many different poets in different times ...
... audience. The necessary angel, after all, proves to be another godchild of the Muse, and I think Homer gives his audiences (including us) an idea of poetry and its ambitions in more ways than are commonly realized. If Homer's idea of ...
... audiences. Thus the fact that the idea of poetry is always changing and the fact that all poets must take up one such idea and in some way embody it in their work combine to make it necessary for us to consider Homeric epic on its own ...
Contents
Homers Muses and the Unity of Epic | |
Tradition Transmission and Time | |
Signs of Writing in Homer | |
The Voice of Song | |
Conclusion | |
Index Locorum | |
General Index | |