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Homer (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,024
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Homer (Paperback)
Series: Hermes Books Series
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Most studies of the Homeric poems have been dominated by the
historical and anthropological views, concentrating on their place
in the oral tradition and diverting attention from the nature of
the poetry itself. Paolo Vivante offers us an intense look at the
Iliad and the Odyssey, focusing on the poetic treatment of story,
characters, and nature. Vivante discusses Homer's sense of time,
the capacity to resolve any complex event into the creative moments
of its realization. Rather than narrative, Homer presents events in
the making, as the story takes shape through the rhythm of
successive acts. The recurrent phrases (the "formulas"), far from
being an "oral" device, affirm the reality of acts that cannot help
but fulfill their allotted moment. Arbitrary description yields to
the self-consistency of the human condition. Vivante shows how such
a mode of representation results in a sense of truth. Since the
story is presented as moment to moment experience, the style itself
reflects the clarity of what is possible and convincing. Hence the
curtailment of the mythical, the humanization of gods and heroes.
Homer's poetry continually transcends the mythology of the
background. The last chapter, "Age and Place of Homer," relates the
poems to the spirit of eighth-century Ionia. Homer is placed at the
center of a renaissance, not seen as the ultimate spokesman of a
long epic tradition.
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