Homer's Traditional Art [Paperback]

John Miles Foley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

In recent decades, the evidence for an oral epic tradition in ancient Greece has grown enormously along with our ever-increasing awareness of worldwide oral traditions. John Foley here examines the artistic implications that oral tradition holds for the understanding of the Iliad and Odyssey in order to establish a context for their original performance and modern-day reception.In Homer's Traditional Art, Foley addresses three crucially interlocking areas that lead us to a fuller appreciation of the Homeric poems. He first explores the reality of Homer as their actual author, examining historical and comparative evidence to propose that "Homer" is a legendary and anthropomorphic figure rather than a real-life author. He next presents the poetic tradition as a specialized and highly resonant language bristling with idiomatic implication. Finally, he looks at Homer's overall artistic achievement, showing that it is best evaluated via a poetics aimed specifically at works that emerge from oral tradition.Along the way, Foley offers new perspectives on such topics as characterization and personal interaction in the epics, the nature of Penelope's heroism, the implications of feasting and lament, and the problematic ending of the Odyssey. His comparative references to South Slavic oral epic open up new vistas on Homer's language, narrative patterning, and identity.Homer's Traditional Art represents a disentangling of the interwoven strands of orality, textuality, and verbal art. It shows how we can learn to appreciate how Homer's art succeeds not in spite of the oral tradition in which it was composed but rather through its unique agency.

Editorial Reviews

Review

John Miles Foley's Homer's Traditional Art is an important book for anyone interested in the application of oral theory to early Greek epic. --Susan C. Shelmerdine, Classical and Modern Literature

No one interested in Homer can afford to ignore this book. --Susan C. Shelmerdine, Classical and Modern Literature

His fluency in an eclectic but thoroughly integrated range of theoretical stances enhances the book's utility as a methodological resource and its effectiveness as a guide for discovering the poetics that enable our reception of oral tradition verbal art forms such as the Homeric poems. --James Wells, Journal of Folklore Research --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

John Miles Foley is William H. Byler Distinguished Chair in the Humanities and Curators' Professor of Classical Studies and English at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and the editor and founder of the journal Oral Tradition. Among his recent books are Traditional Oral Epic (California, 1990) and The Singer of Tales in Performance (Indiana, 1995).

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271028106
• ISBN-13: 978-0271028101
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,079,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of _Homer's Traditional Art_, March 5, 2000

By 

R. Scott Garner (Princeton, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Homer's Traditional Art (Hardcover)

As John Miles Foley states in its preface, _Homer's Traditional Art_ is at its most fundamental level a response to the question "What difference does oral tradition make to our understanding of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_?" That an ancient Greek oral tradition is intertwined with the fabric of the Homeric texts is now almost universally held by scholars to be a fact, but how does this traditional influence manifest itself and with what significance for us today? In formulating his answers to these questions, Foley first provides a foundation of comparative evidence, homemade proverbs, and basic observations on oral traditional texts in general and then proceeds to demonstrate the particular relevance of such items for Homeric poetry in particular. Throughout the book, the essential concepts are formulated in such a way as to be accessible for general students of varying backgrounds, while many insights useful to the professional Homeric scholar appear as well, especially in the substantial endnotes and appendices (including a comparative treatment of the Old English _Deor_).

Thus, Chapter 1 discusses the nature and dynamics of Homer's "signs" (Gk. _semata_), that is, elements within the poetry that index traditional meanings and knowledge, thereby reaching beyond their immediate or literal contexts in order to convey further implications for a tradition-aware audience. This indexing process (termed "traditional referentiality") can be found at every level of the poetry, from the smallest formula to the entire Homeric register as a whole. Chapters 2-4 provide comparative evidence for Homer via South Slavic oral poetry. After first reviewing the scholarly debates over the analogy, Chapter 2 then examines the parallel from the perspective of the singers themselves. Chapter 3 continues this examination and investigates the similarities and differences between the specialized languages of Homer and the South Slavic _guslari_. Chapter 4 then discusses the traditional referentiality of South Slavic poetry as it pertains to story-patterns, typical scenes, and formulas.

Having created a comparative framework from which to proceed, Foley uses the following sections of this book to explore the effects of oral tradition in the Homeric poems themselves. Chapter 5 focuses on the traditional story-pattern of the Return Song and its implications for Penelope's characterization and the unity of the _Odyssey_ (and the particular importance for its ending). Chapter 6 then examines the typical scenes of feast especially in the _Odyssey_) and lament (limited to the _Iliad_), while Chapter 7 details the nature of traditional referentiality in relation to Homeric phraseology. All of these observations on _Homer's Traditional Art_ then culminate in Chapter 8 in which Foley provides a close reading of an extended passage of the _Odyssey_ (from Book 23) that incorporates each of the traditional perspectives established in the preceding chapters and gives a very clear "sign" of his own, demonstrating the difference that an understanding of Homer's underlying oral tradition can make.