Egbert J. Bakker

A literary study of the Odyssey based on the central economic and symbolic importance of the eating of meat.

The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey

Applying linguistic theory to the study of Homeric style, Egbert J. Bakker offers a highly innovative approach to oral poetry, particularly the poetry of Homer. By situating formulas and other features of oral style within the wider contexts of spoken language and communication, he moves the study of oral poetry beyond the landmark work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord. One of the book's central features, related to the research of the linguist Wallace Chafe, is Bakker's conception of spoken discourse as a sequence of short speech units reflecting the flow of speech through the consciousness of the speaker. Bakker shows that such short speech units are present in Homeric poetry, with significant consequences for Homeric metrics and poetics. Considering Homeric discourse as a speech process rather than as the finished product associated with written discourse, Bakker's book offers a new perspective on Homer as well as on other archaic Greek texts. Here Homeric discourse appears as speech in its own right, and is freed, Bakker suggests, from the bias of modern writing style which too easily views Homeric discourse as archaic, implicitly taking the style of classical period texts as the norm. Bakker's perspective reaches beyond syntax and stylistics into the very heart of Homeric—and, ultimately, oral—poetics, altering the status of key features such as meter and formula, rethinking their relevance to the performance of Homeric poetry, and leading to surprising insights into the relation between "speech" and "text" in the encounter of the Homeric tradition with writing.

Orality and Homeric Discourse

Poetry in Speech

Building on his earlier work, Bakker demonstrates the power of discourse analysis, in this case a detailed analysis of the language of "deixis" as an essential tool for elucidating the poetics of the Homeric tradition. The book deals with such varied topics as epic formulas, grammatical tense, and the celebrated "vividness" of the Homeric poems."--Jacket.

From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics

Pointing at the Past

Irene J.F. de Jong

Hans van Wees

Herodotus’ outstanding achievements as a literary figure, intellectual, historian and ethnographer have in recent years come to be appreciated with much greater depth and subtlety. This Companion offers an up-to-date and in-depth overview of current approaches to Herodotus’ remarkable work.

Brill's Companion to Herodotus

Irene J. F. de Jong

Herodotus Histories can be read in many ways. Their literary qualities, never in dispute, can be more fully appreciated in the light of recent developments in the study of pragmatics, narratology, and orality. Their intellectual status has been radically reassessed: no longer regarded as naïve and archaic , the Histories are now seen as very much a product of the intellectual climate of their own day - not only subject to contemporary literary, religious, moral and social influences, but actively contributing to the great debates of their time. Their reliability as historical and ethnographic accounts, a matter of controversy even in antiquity, is being debated with renewed vigour and increasing sophistication. This Companion offers an up-to-date and in-depth overview of all these current approaches to Herodotus remarkable work.

A comprehensive account of the language of Ancient Greek civilization in a single volume, with contributions from leading international scholars covering the historical, geographical, sociolinguistic, and literary perspectives of the language. A collection of 36 original essays by a team of international scholars Treats the survival and transmission of Ancient Greek Includes discussions on phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics

A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language

Bakker offers a highly innovative approach to oral poetry, particularly the poetry of Homer.

The purpose of this study is to provide a description of the Greek particle per as it occurs in the text of Homer. As such it is a contribution to the study of Ancient Greek in general and of the Greek' particles in particular. But the work transgresses the boundaries of Greek linguistics' proper.First, the discussion of per as a scalar article contributes to the discussion of scalar phenomena in general. Second, as a description of a linguistic feature in the Iliad and Odyssey, metrical texts of oral-formulaic origin, this study is also an essay in the relation between linguistics on the one hand and formulas and metre on the other.

Scalarity and the Description of the Particle Per

Linguistics and Formulas in Homer

Proceedings of the conference held in Vand¶uvres, Genáeve, August 22-26, 2005.

Egbert J. Bakker

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