." . . the latest in [Nagy's] series of brilliant and provocative
works that open up new vistas in Homeric studies. . . . Informed
and creative, wide-ranging and profound, this book stands at the
cutting edge of Homeric scholarship and reminds readers why its
author is one of the foremost classical scholars in the world
today. -- Choice "Nagy performs a valuable service, in the current
climate of Homeric studies, simply by reminding us once again, and
forcefully, that the relationship between our written texts of
Greek epic and their oral origins is a problematic one." --
Southern Humanities Review
The "Homeric Question" has vexed Classicists for generations.
Was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey a single individual who
created the poems at a particular moment in history? Or does the
name "Homer" hide the shaping influence of the epic tradition
during a long period of oral composition and transmission?
In this innovative investigation, Gregory Nagy applies the
insights of comparative linguistics and anthropology to offer a new
historical model for understanding how, when, where, and why the
Iliad and the Odyssey were ultimately preserved as written texts
that could be handed down over two millennia. His model draws on
the comparative evidence provided by living oral epic traditions,
in which each performance of a song often involves a recomposition
of the narrative.
This evidence suggests that the written texts emerged from an
evolutionary process in which composition, performance, and
diffusion interacted to create the epics we know as the Iliad and
the Odyssey. Sure to challenge orthodox views and provoke lively
debate, Nagy's book will be essential reading forall students of
oral traditions.
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