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
Our Book Club readings this month are from Albert Bates Lord: Epic Singers and Oral Tradition, which is available online for free at CHS. As usual we will start and continue the discussion in the forum (here), and we will meet via Google+ Hangout on Tuesday, October 31 at 11 a.m. EDT. We will all read the following chapter: Chapter 1: “Words Heard and Words Seen” In addition, you may… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Kevin McGrath for an Open House discussion about Indo-European Epic Poetry. In preparation, you might like to read and think carefully about Odyssey 8.487–491. Demodokos, I admire and pointedly praise you, more than any other human. 488 Either the Muse, child of Zeus, taught you, or Apollo. 489 All too well, in accord with its kosmos, do you sing the fate of the Achaeans [490]… Read more
We are pleased to share the news that Epic Singers and Oral Tradition by Albert Bates Lord is now available in electronic form, for free, from the CHS website, here. In the Introduction, he writes: “It is of the nature of things that Homer and his poems should play some role, directly or indirectly, in all the articles in this volume. It is not surprising, either, that South Slavic oral-traditional… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Douglas Frame, for an Open House discussion on ‘Echoes of the Indo-European Twin Gods in Sanskrit and Greek Epic: Arjuna and Achilles’. You can watch the recording of the broadcast via the frame below, or on our YouTube channel. To prepare for this conversation, participants might like to read the following paper by Douglas Frame: Echoes of the Indo-European Twin Gods in Sanskrit and Greek… Read more