The rise of the Greek epic

Abstract

My title is familiar as that of a book, and my subject may be thought to call for one. I hope in due course to explore the genesis of the Homeric poems in that format, and what I have to say here may take its place there in a maturer form (wiser, fatter). For the moment I offer merely a provisional attempt to trace out the stages by which the epic tradition developed, stopping short of any discussion of the Iliad and Odyssey themselves. Any such attempt necessarily involves a certain amount of rehearsal of familiar arguments, and, if it is to be plausible, a fair measure of concurrence in familiar conclusions. But conclusions that are familiar are sometimes also controversial, and can be strengthened against their assailants by a fresh discussion; and I have certain doctrines of my own that are best presented in the context of a broad synthesis.

‘Reading the texts’: archaeology and the Homeric question

“…Such a view is far from universally accepted (Kirk 1962: 120;Chadwick 1976: 182f. ; West 1988), and Dickinson's argument seems to rest partly on a misunderstanding of the nature and effects ofthe language changes which take place in a living tradition of continuous oral transmission. For the other, I find it hard to believe that epic audiences, who could stomach such strange contradictions as the neck-to-ankle circular shield of Hector, or the transformation of Agamemnon -in the space of a single bookfrom being lord of all Argos and many islands to ruler of a small kingdom stretching in quite the opposite direction (Iliad ii.108, contrast 569-76), would care very much about a few details added as occasional, and apparently quite arbitrary, 'distancing effects' of a very minor and often inconsistent nature (Morris 1986: 89f.…”

“…These developments almost certainly took place in several regions of Greece, probably at different times during the course of this long period (cf. West 1988;Janko 1982: 92), which may account both for the dialectal variety and for the appearance of regional comprehensiveness (in terms of the Greek Mainland at least) which can be seen in the epics as we have them.…”

“…These hold hints of a chronological disparity, which in turn gives us the key to the poems' ultimate genesis and history. Broadly similar approaches to the epic texts have been adopted by, for example, Shipp (1972), Ruijgh (1957) and West (1988) who, however, have been concerned particularly with the relationship between elements of the texts and anomalous linguistic phenomena: Shipp with the relationship between linguistic and poetic neologisms and those elements of the epics (similes, digressions, descriptions, speeches, comments) which he considers to be additional to a core tradition (see, however Householder & Nagy 1972: 22); Ruijgh with the relationship between formulaic elements and examples of particularly archaic vocabulary; and West with the detection of proto-Greek (pre-Linear B) shadows in the metrical structure of certain lines and passages which he projects back to the early Mycenaean period or even beyond (cf. also Watkins 1987).…”

Camões e Tartessos: Leituras em torno de dois excertos d’Os Lusíadas

“…Para a discussão sobre a origem da épica grega, veja-se o interessante artigo de M.L. West (1988) (Chassignet, 1998: 155 (Sena, 1980, apud Oliveira, 1998 24 . Tal percurso temporal parece ser apresentado como 21.…”

THE ‘NARROW ROAD’ AND THE ETHICS OF LANGUAGE USE IN THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY

“…10.315 it refers (in the nominative) to the Trojan Dolon, whose encounter with Odysseus and Diomedes I discuss below. West (1988), 156, notes that the asyndetic pairing of compound adjectives with the same initial element is a very ancient poetic device (for similar examples in Homer, see Il. 5.613 and 9.154 [=9.296]).…”