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A fresh account of Homer's creativity using contemporary linguistics and cognitive sciences and parallels from modern-day popular culture.
This is the second volume on the mechanisms of oral communication in ancient Greece, focused on epic poetry, a genre with deep roots in orality. Considering the critical debate about orality and its influence on the composition, diffusion and transmission of the archaic epic poems, the survey provides a reconsideration and a reassessment of the traces of orality in the archaic epic poetry, following their adaptation in the synchronic and diachronic changes of the communicative system. Combining the methods of cognitive science, and the historical and literary analysis of the texts, the research explores the complexity of the literary message of the Greek epic poetry, highlighting its position in a system of oral communication. The consideration of structural and formal aspects, i.e. the traces of orality in the narrative architecture, in the epic diction, in the meter and the formulaic system, as well as the vestiges of the mixture of orality and writing, allows to reconstruct a dynamic frame of communicative modalities which influenced and enriched the archaic epic poetry, providing it with expressive potentialities destined to a longlasting permanence in the history of the genre.
An accessible, up-to-date, and innovative account of key features of Homer's poetry (formularity, meter, and dialect). This book is informed by contemporary linguistics and cognitive sciences, and leverages unexpected modern-day parallels (popular music, jazz improvisation, sports commentary) to illustrate Homer's creativity.
The volume deals with the mechanisms of the oral communication in the ancient Greek culture. Considering the critical debate about orality, the analysis of the communicative system in a predominantly oral-aural ancient society implies a reassessment and a deep reconsideration of the traces which orality embedded in the texts transmitted to us. In particular, the focus is on the 'cultural message', a set of information which is processed and transmitted vertically as well as horizontally by a living being, so to be differently from a genetically encoded information, a culturally defined process. The survey intertwines different approaches: the methodologies of cognitivism, biology, ethology, ...
For New Testament biblical scholars, this book constitutes a vital summary of contemporary, theoretically-sound interpretations of the linguistic functions of the Post-Classical (Koine) Greek article in a way that will inform exegesis of the text, especially in the field of larger discourse units. There is also significant payoff for the as-yet significantly under-researched field of Koine linguistics. The essays included in this volume are written by notable experts, offering contributions to the linguistic analysis of the Post-Classical Greek language. While there remains no comprehensive treatment of the grammar of the Post-Classical dialects, individual elements of that grammar continue to be fruitfully explored. The collection presented here offers interpretations of the functions and grammar of the Greek article (ὁ, ἡ, τό) from a variety of perspectives, including generative grammar and discourse analysis, along with studies that make use of text-critical and diachronic data. Together, these supply readers of Greek with a thorough understanding of the functions of the article and constitute a starting point for further research efforts.
Before they were written down, the poems attributed to Homer were performed orally, usually by rhapsodes (singers/reciters) who might have traveled from city to city or enjoyed a position in a wealthy household. Even after the Iliad and the Odyssey were committed to writing, rhapsodes performed the poems at festivals, often competing against each other. As they recited the epics, the rhapsodes spoke as both the narrator and the characters. These different acts—performing the poem and narrating and speaking in character within it—are seldom studied in tandem. Homer in Performance breaks new ground by bringing together all of the speakers involved in the performance of Homeric poetry: rhap...
Interrogating the much-cherished concept of “poetic thinking,” this book focuses on what interview and draft materials reveal of how poets actually do think, when in the act of writing. The interviews confirm what findings from cognitive science and linguistics make clear: we rarely know exactly what words we are going to say, until we have said them. Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought draws out the implications of a radically curtailed view of consciousness on how we understand the drafting and revision of lines of poetry, with implications for our theorisation of the composition of prose. Henrich von Kleist’s assertion that “it is not we, but a certain condition of ou...
This Introduction to Avestan provides a concise grammar of the Avestan language, the language of the followers of the Iranian prophet Zarathustra. The grammar focuses on spelling, phonology and morphology, but also includes a chapter on syntax. Abundant information on the historical development of the language is included, which renders the grammar very useful for students of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European. Also, a small number of selected Avestan texts is added, with a complete glossary, so that students can practise reading Avestan.
The Program in Indo-European Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, sponsors an Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. The Conference welcomes participation by linguists, philologists, and others engaged in all aspects of Indo-European studies. These Proceedings include papers presented at the Thirty-Second Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, held in an online format. Inhalt: – Preface – Michele Bianconi: A New Look at Phrygian Metre – Chiara Bozzone and Ryan Sandell: One or Many Homers? Using Quantitative Authorship Analysis to Study the Homeric Question – Isabelle de Meyer: Myc. a-mo and Gk. ἅρμα: The Enigma that Keeps on Rolling – Benjamin W. Fortson IV: The...
This book is the first to explore the varied ways in which invented languages can be used to teach languages and linguistics in university courses. Renowned scholars and junior researchers show how using invented languages can appeal to a wider range of students, and can help those students to develop the fundamental skills of linguistic analysis.