cambridge companion to homerassets.cambridge.org/97805210/12461/frontmatter/... · 2015-02-24 ·...

Cambridge Companion to Homer

The Cambridge Companion to Homer is a guide to the essential aspects ofHomeric criticism and scholarship, including the reception of the poems inancient and modern times. Written by an international team of scholars, it isintended to be the first port of call for students at all levels, with introductionsto important subjects and suggestions for further exploration. Alongside tradi-tional topics like the Homeric question, the divine apparatus of the poems, theformulas, the characters and the archaeological background, there are detaileddiscussions of similes, speeches, the poet as story-teller and the genre of epicboth within Greece and worldwide. The reception chapters include assessmentsof ancient Greek and Roman readings as well as selected modern interpreta-tions from the eighteenth century to the present day. Chapters on Homer inEnglish translation and ‘Homer’ in the history of ideas round out the collection.

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Cambridge University Press978-0-521-012461 - The Cambridge Companion to HomerEdited by Robert FowlerFrontmatterMore information

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Mattia Preti, Homer. Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice






T H E C A M B R I D G E

C O M PA N I O N T O

HOMER

EDITED BY

R O B E RT F O W L E RHenry Overton Wills Professor of Greek in the University of Bristol






C© Cambridge University Press 2004

the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

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CONTENTS

List of illustrations page viiiList of contributors xPreface xvMaps xvii

1 Introduction 1robert fowler

part 1: the poems and their narrator

2 The Iliad: an unpredictable classic 11donald lateiner

3 The Odyssey and its explorations 31michael silk

4 The story-teller and his audience 45ruth scodel

part 2: the characters

5 The Gods in the Homeric epics 59emily kearns

6 Manhood and heroism 74michael clarke

7 Gender and Homeric epic 91nancy felson and laura m. slatkin

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Contents

part 3: the poet’s craft

8 Formulas, metre and type-scenes 117matthew clark

9 Similes and other likenesses 139richard buxton

10 The speeches 156jasper griffin

part 4: text and context

11 Epic as genre 171john miles foley

12 The epic tradition in Greece 188ken dowden

13 Homer’s society 206robin osborne

14 The Homeric question 220robert fowler

part 5: homeric receptions

15 Homer and Greek literature 235richard hunter

16 Roman Homer 254joseph farrell

17 Homer and English epic 272penelope wilson

18 Homer and the Romantics 287timothy webb

19 Homer and Ulysses 311vanda zajko

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Contents

20 Homer: the history of an idea 324james i . porter

21 ‘Shards and suckers’: contemporary receptions of Homer 344lorna hardwick

22 Homer in English translation 363george steiner

Dateline 376List of works cited 378Index of passages discussed 415General index 416

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece

Mattia Preti, Homer. Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice page ii

Plates

1 Archelaos of Priene, Hellenistic relief depicting the apotheosis ofHomer. British Museum BM2191. Photo: copyright, BritishMuseum. 236

2 Angelica Kauffman, Penelope Invoking Minerva’s Aid for theSafe Return of Telemachus. Stourhead, The Hoare Collection(The National Trust). Photo: Photographic Survey, CourtauldInstitute of Art. 288

3 Angelica Kauffman, Penelope Weeping Over the Bow of Ulysses.Photo reproduced by courtesy of Burghley House. 289

4a Thomas Piroli (after Flaxman), The Fight for the Body ofPatroclus. Photo: The Fitzwilliam Museum, University ofCambridge. 292

4b Thomas Piroli (after Flaxman), Thetis Bringing the Armour toAchilles. Photo: The Fitzwilliam Museum, University ofCambridge. 292

5a Thomas Piroli (after Flaxman), Penelope Surprised by Suitors.Photo: The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. 293

5b Thomas Piroli (after Flaxman), Ulysses at the Table of Circe.Photo: The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. 293

6 Henry Fuseli, Achilles Grasps at the Shade of Patroclus, c. 1810.Photo: Kunsthaus, Zurich. 296

7 Henry Fuseli, Achilles Sacrifices his Hair on the Funeral Pyre ofPatroclus, c. 1800/1805. Photo: Kunsthaus, Zurich. 297

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List of illustrations

8 ‘The Whole Works of Homer: Prince of Poets’, title page fromChapman’s translation of Homer’s Iliad. Photo: by permission ofthe Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 309

9 Circe’s Carnival scene with the banquet of the pigs, The Odyssey:A Stage Version, by Derek Walcott (Royal Shakespeare Company,1992). Photo: Malcolm Davies, The Shakespeare Centre Library,Stratford-upon-Avon. 352

10 Blind Billy Blue, the jazz-playing bard, The Odyssey: A StageVersion, by Derek Walcott (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1992).Photo: Mark Douet. The Shakespeare Centre Library,Stratford-upon-Avon. 353

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CONTRIBUTORS

richard buxton is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at theUniversity of Bristol. Among his books are Persuasion in Greek Tragedy(1982) and Imaginary Greece (1994). He has also edited From Myth toReason? and Oxford Readings in Greek Religion. His book The CompleteWorld of Greek Mythology was published by Thames and Hudson in 2004.He is currently researching a work on Greek metamorphosis stories.

matthew clark is an Associate Professor in the Division of Humanitiesat York University in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Out of Line:Homeric Composition Beyond the Hexameter, as well as various articles onthe Homeric epics. His most recent book is A Matter of Style: Writing andTechnique (2002), and he is now working on a study of persuasion in theIliad as well as a book about the representation of the self in narrative.

michael clarke studied at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford Univer-sity, and since 1999 he has been Lecturer in Ancient Classics at the NationalUniversity of Ireland, Maynooth. He is the author of Flesh and Spirit in theSongs of Homer (1999), and he is currently working on a study of histori-cal semantics and linguistic change, using materials from Greek and otherIndo-European languages.

ken dowden is Professor of Classics in the Institute of Archaeology andAntiquity at the University of Birmingham. He is well known for his work inmythology (Death and the Maiden (1989); Uses of Greek Mythology (1992);but has also published more widely on religion European Paganism (2000),Religion and the Romans (1992), Zeus (forthcoming), and has written avariety of periodical articles on Greek and Roman literature, particularlythe ancient novel.

joseph farrell is Professor of Classical Studies in the University ofPennsylvania. He is the author of Vergil’s Georgics and the Traditions of

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List of contributors

Ancient Epic (New York 1991) and of Latin Language and Latin Culture(2001).

nancy felson is Professor of Classics at the University of Georgia. Shehas published Regarding Penelope: From Character to Poetics (1994) and, asguest editor of Arethusa, ‘Semiotics and classical studies’ (1983) and ‘Deixisand Greek choral lyric’ (forthcoming, Arethusa 37, 2004). She has also editedSymbols in Ancient Greek Poetry and Myth (1980), and co-edited (with T. M.Falkner and D. Konstan) Contextualizing Classics: Ideology, Performance,Dialogue (2000). Her articles and book chapters include publications onstory patterns and deictics in Pindaric epinicia and on constructions of gen-der in epinicia and epic, most recently with an emphasis on boyhood andmasculinity.

john miles foley is a specialist in the world’s oral traditions, withparticular emphasis on ancient Greek, medieval English, and contemporarySouth Slavic traditions. He serves as Curators’ Professor of Classical Studiesand English, as W. H. Byler Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, and as thefounding Director of the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the Univer-sity of Missouri–Columbia, USA, where he edits the journal Oral Tradition,the Blackwell Companion to Ancient Epic, and two series of books. He haspublished many volumes and articles on Homer and worldwide oral poetry,most recently How To Read an Oral Poem (2002), which is complementedby the website www.oraltradition.org.

robert fowler is Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek and Dean ofArts in the University of Bristol. He is author of The Nature of Early GreekLyric: Three Preliminary Studies (Toronto 1987), Early Greek Mythogra-phy I: Text and Introduction (Oxford 2000), and articles on early Greekpoetry and prose and the history of scholarship. He is preparing Early GreekMythography II: Commentary.

jasper griffin is Professor of Classical Literature at Oxford University,where he is also a Fellow of Balliol College. His publications include Homeron Life and Death (1980), Homer: The Odyssey (Cambridge, 1987) andHomer: Iliad IX (1995). He has also published extensively on Attic tragedy,Virgil, and Latin prose, especially Cicero.

lorna hardwick teaches in the Department of Classical Studies at theOpen University, where she is Professor of Classical Studies and Director ofthe Research Project on the Reception of Greek Texts and Images in Mod-ern Drama and Poetry (see http://www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/ Greek-Plays). Recent publications also include Translating Words, Translating

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Cultures (2000) and New Surveys in the Classics: Reception Studies (2003).She is currently working on the relationships between classical texts andtheir receptions in post-colonial drama and poetry.

richard hunter is Regius Professor of Greek at the University ofCambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. His most recent books arePlato’s Symposium (New York 2004), Theocritus, Encomium of PtolemyPhiladelphus (Berkeley 2003) and (with Marco Fantuzzi) Muse e modelli. Lapoesia ellenistica da Alessandro Magno ad Augusto (Bari 2002). An English-language version of Muse e modelli, Tradition and Innovation in HellenisticPoetry, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

emily kearns teaches classical languages and literature at St Hilda’sCollege, Oxford. She is author of The Heroes of Attica (London 1989) andhas edited with Simon Price The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth andReligion (2003).

donald lateiner teaches humanities and classics courses at OhioWesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio (USA). His research includes non-verbal behaviours in ancient literature, Homeric and Ovidian epic poetry,the Roman novels, and the historiography of Herodotus and Thucydides.His published books are The Historical Method of Herodotus (1989) andSardonic Smile: Nonverbal Behavior in Homeric Epic (Ann Arbor 1995).He is currently working on a study of insult and humiliation in Homer andclassical Athens based on texts from epic, pottery, comedy, philosophy andoratory.

robin osborne is Professor of Ancient History in the University ofCambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. He is the author of Greecein the Making, 1200–479 BC (1996) and Archaic and Classical Greek Art(1998) and editor of Classical Greece (2000) and, with P. J. Rhodes, of GreekHistorical Inscriptions 404–323 BC (Oxford 2003).

james i . porter is Professor of Classical Studies and ComparativeLiterature at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Nietzsche andthe Philology of the Future (2000) and The Invention of Dionysus: An Essayon The Birth of Tragedy (2000), and is editor of Constructions of the Clas-sical Body (1999). His current projects include a collection of essays, Clas-sical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome, a book entitledThe Material Sublime in Greek and Roman Aesthetics, and a study on thereception of Homer from Greece to the present (Homer: The Very Idea).

ruth scodel is Professor of Greek and Latin at the University ofMichigan. She is the author of Credible Impossibilities: Conventions and

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Strategies of Verisimilitude in Homer and Greek Tragedy (1999) and Listen-ing to Homer (2002).

michael silk is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at King’sCollege in the University of London and, at the time of writing, VisitingProfessor of Greek and Comparative Literature at Boston University. Hisbooks include Homer, The Iliad (2nd edn, 2003) and Aristophanes and theDefinition of Comedy (2000).

laura m. slatkin teaches classical studies at New York University(Gallatin School) and the University of Chicago. She has published ThePower of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad (1992) and articleson Greek epic poetry and drama. She co-edited (with Nicole Loraux andGregory Nagy) Histories of Post-War French Thought, vol. 2, Antiquities:Rewriting the Past, Rethinking the Present (2001).

george steiner is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Lit-erature, University of Geneva, and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.He is author of some fifteen books including The Death of Tragedy (1961),Antigones (1984), Real Presences (1989), and Lessons of the Masters (2003).

timothy webb is Winterstoke Professor in the Department of Englishat the University of Bristol. His books include The Violet in the Crucible:Shelley and Translation (1976), and editions and critical studies of a widerange of authors and topics including Shelley, Byron, Keats, Leigh Hunt,Romantic Hellenism, Romantic perceptions of Ireland, Yeats and Joyce.

penelope wilson is a Fellow and College Lecturer in English Literatureat New Hall, Cambridge, and has published mainly on eighteenth-centuryliterature and on the classical tradition. She is currently working on thehistory of translation and on a study of English commentary on classicalpoetry from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries.

vanda zajko is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol. She haswide-ranging interests in the reception of Greek and Latin literature. Hermost recent essay is ‘“Petruchio is Kated”: The Taming of the Shrew andOvid’, in C. Martindale and A. B. Taylor, eds., Shakespeare and the Classics(2004).

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PREFACE

Extremely pleased though I was at the Press’s invitation to edit this volume,the enormity of its subject induced an unusually acute sense of apprehension.No one could ever do it complete justice. It is also a subject which arousesthe greatest passions – as is only right, for Homer is an author whose staturein the Western tradition is approached only by Virgil and Plato, and sur-passed only by the Bible. Everything is at stake in him. But apprehensionwas balanced by the many pleasures of the task, not least that of being ableto spend more time in the company of the supreme bard and so many insight-ful readers. The authors here assembled hope to have done him at least aworthy service; and Homer is surely sublime enough to forgive the inevitableinjustice.

I have been fortunate at every stage to have excellent advice from the Press’sreaders and its Classics Editor, and from my fellow contributors. There wasmuch discussion at the very beginning about the design of the volume, fromwhich I benefited greatly. Perhaps the most noticeable feature of this designis the devotion of much space to Homer’s reception. Some of the reasons forthis I have sought to make clear in the Introduction. In general, receptionof Classics is increasingly seen as part of the subject itself. There is a worldof work to be done, and new vistas of interpretation are constantly openingup. Further on in the process of production, drafts were circulated, so thatwe could take account of each others’ views and add appropriate cross-references. The result is a more cohesive and useful book, but not one witha uniform critical perspective: that was never the idea. My warmest thanksto all involved.

Some practical notes for readers: abbreviations in the volume follow stan-dard lists such as those in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn, 1996) orthe ninth edition of Liddell, Scott and Jones’ Greek–English Lexicon (withSupplement, Oxford 1968); and throughout, books of the Iliad are cited inArabic numerals, of the Odyssey in Roman. In the matter of Latinisation

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Preface

of names, we have allowed contributors their preferences, so that you willfind ‘Patroklos’ in one chapter, ‘Patroclus’ in the next. Citations of Homer’sGreek follow Martin West’s edition of the Iliad (Stuttgart 1998–2000) andHelmut van Thiel’s edition of the Odyssey (Hildesheim 1991). Translationsof Homer are by contributors, unless acknowledged.

R. L. F.7 November 2003

xvi






MAPS

1 Mainland Greece page xviii2 Eastern Aegean xx

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