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Grounded in the legacies of two pioneering scholars of oral literature, Milman Parry and Albert Lord, Singers and Tales in the Twenty-First Century gathers essays on what the study of oral poetry means today across diverse traditions, especially in light of transformations that have dramatically reshaped and destabilized the notion of tradition.
The Poetics of Consent breaks new ground in Homeric studies by interpreting the Iliad’s depictions of political action in terms of the poetic forces that shaped the Iliad itself. Arguing that consensus is a central theme of the epic, David Elmer analyzes in detail scenes in which the poem’s three political communities—Achaeans, Trojans, and Olympian gods—engage in the process of collective decision making. These scenes reflect an awareness of the negotiation involved in reconciling rival versions of the Iliad over centuries. They also point beyond the Iliad’s world of gods and heroes to the here-and-now of the poem’s performance and reception, in which the consensus over the shape and meaning of the Iliadic tradition is continuously evolving. Elmer synthesizes ideas and methods from literary and political theory, classical philology, anthropology, and folklore studies to construct an alternative to conventional understandings of the Iliad’s politics. The Poetics of Consent reveals the ways in which consensus and collective decision making determined the authoritative account of the Trojan War that we know as the Iliad. -- Richard Martin, Stanford University
Elmer is BIG. Bird is SMALL. Tiger is FAST. Tortoise is SLOW. Have fun looking at opposites from FRONT to BACK in this delightful board book!
Elmer loves practical jokes, but so does his cousin Wilbur. Until, that is, Elmer has an idea which brings Wilbur back down to earth, in more ways than one...
This ninth Orality and Literacy volume considers oral composition, performance, reception, and the mutual interplay between oral performance and written text. Authors under consideration are Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Isocrates, orators of the Second Sophistic, and Proclus. Cross-cultural studies are included.
It's a blustery day in the jungel and Elmer and his cousin Wilbur are up to their old tricks again! The thing is, they don't realise just how strong the wind is blowing - strong enough to carry a patchwork elephant up above the tress and off on a great adventure!
The elephants are not happy - the hippos have come to share the river because theirs has dried up. When they complain to Elmer that the river is over-crowded, everyone's favourite patchwork elephant sets off to see if he can find a solution . . .
Elmer and the other elephants are waiting for the storm to end so they can see the beautiful, colourful rainbow. But something dreadful has happened: the rainbow has lost its colours! Elmer decides to give his own colours to the rainbow. But what will happen to Elmer if he gives the rainbow his own colours? Will he lose them for ever?
The existing manuscripts of Old Norse mythology were written mainly by Christians, obscuring the pre-Christian oral histories. This book assembles comparisons from a range of analytical perspectives--examining the similarities and differences of the Old Norse mythologies with the myths of other cultures and within the Old Norse corpus itself.
Reconceptualizing the epic genre and opening it up to a world of storytelling, The Epic World makes a timely and bold intervention toward understanding the human propensity to aestheticize and normalize mass deployments of power and violence. The collection broadly considers three kinds of epic literature: conventional celebratory tales of conquest that glorify heroism, especially male heroism; anti-epics or stories of conquest from the perspectives of the dispossessed, the oppressed, the despised, and the murdered; and heroic stories utilized for imperialist or nationalist purposes. The Epic World illustrates global patterns of epic storytelling, such as the durability of stories tied to re...