epic

Book Club

Book Club | April 2019: Casey Dué Achilles Unbound

The Book Club readings for this month are from Casey Dué’s recent book, Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics, which is available to read for free on the CHS website. https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Due.Achilles_Unbound.2018 We will all read the Introduction, and Chapter 1: ‘”Winged Words”: How We Came to Have Our Iliad‘. You can then also read as many other chapters as you wish. Discussion will start and continue in… Read more

Topic for Discussion

Performance of epic | Part 1: Aoidoi in epic poetry

In a dialogue of Plato, Ion, the character Ion is a famous rhapsode. He is just coming back from a famous festival in Epidaurus where he performed Homeric poetry. [1] Plato’s dialogue dates from the late 5th century BCE [2], but it is not easy to find specific information about rhapsodes from the archaic period. The word rhapsōdos [ῥαψῳδός] itself is not used in Homeric or Hesiodic poetry. The word used… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | September 2018: The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic

The subject of the Iliad is the anger of Achilles, not Achilles himself. But what is this anger of his? The Book Club this month will be reading and discussing selections from The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic (available free online at the Center for Hellenic Studies.) We will be reading how Leonard Muellner uses the insights of Albert Lord on epic themes, and looks at such anger not… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | April 2018: The Tears of Achilles

In an epic text, how were poets able to represent emotion? How can we understand today their way of speaking? Did Achilles “copy” the behavior of warriors from those distant times? Or might it be the reverse: did the epic influence certain real behaviors? Our Book Club selection for April is taken from Hélène Monsacré: The Tears of Achilles, available online at CHS. This book, originally published in French as… Read more

Ancient Greek language

Practicing Homeric epic meter: dactylic hexameter, with Leonard Muellner

In this video, Leonard Muellner demonstrates and provides help for those learning dactylic hexameter—the meter of Homeric epic. You can hear the rhythm and, by pausing the video, you can practice by repeating what you have heard, or by reading ahead for yourself as demonstrated in the video. The text shown on screen, which includes some lines marked up in a visual way, is also available as a PDF handout… Read more