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
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... phrases. I have generally Latinized the consonants (e.g., chi becomes ch), and used ê and ô to signal Greek eta and omega respectively. I have omitted accents where the form is unambiguous. But I have not been consistent where the ...
... phrases repeatedly used in connection with poetry, I have been especially concerned to bring to bear other passages that have not been read in this connection. I do so not in the expectation that all poetry is about poetry—a tiresome ...
... phrases and legends that one's society has developed for centuries is to ask about his relation to his Muses. Yet this personification is far from simple, and glossing the Muses as “memory” or “tradition” can be a way of settling all ...
... phrases and patterns in poems so widely dispersed in time and place is a sign that they are derived from the period of wholly oral composition and performance that preceded our texts. Hence, insofar as these patterns imply something ...
... phrase. Sometimes these are read as a kind of table of contents, but the Odyssey's opening does not provide a very good index of what is to follow, and announcing in advance a fixed plan might not always be a good idea for an oral poet ...
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 | |