Poetry as Performance by Gregory Nagy
This book is a comparative study of oral poetics in literate cultures, focusing on the problems of textual fluidity in the transmission of Homeric poetry over half a millennium, from the Archaic through the Hellenistic periods of ancient Greece. It stresses the role of performance and the performer in the re-creative process of composition-in-performance. It addresses questions of authority and authorship in the making of oral poetry, and it examines the efforts of ancient scholars to edit a definitive text of the real Homer.
"In this technical yet clear book, Nagy explores how the Homeric poems, stemming from an oral tradition that can be traced to the middle of the second millenium BCE, became the written texts of today...Rich in detail, knowledge and scope, Nagy's book (the culmination of years of work) offers a lucid, well-argued approach to these problems. It will interest not only specialists in ancient Greek poetry, but anyone concerned with oral traditions." P. Nieto, Choice
Gregory Nagy is Professor of Classics at Harvard University and Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. He has written and edited numerous books on Greek literature, including Homeric Questions, The Everyman's Library The Iliad, Greek Mythology and Poetics, and Poetry as Performance.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780521558488 |
| ISBN 10 | 0521558484 |
| Title | Poetry as Performance |
| Author | Gregory Nagy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Year published | 1996-01-26 |
| Number of pages | 268 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |