Les formules et la métrique d’Homère
Originally published in 1928, for Société d’éditions “Les belles lettres” (Paris). Published here under a Creative Commons License 3.0. Read more
Homer
Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making: I. Homer and Homeric Style
[This article was originally published in 1930 in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 41:73–148. The original page-numbers of the printed version will be indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{73|74}” indicates where p. 73 of the printed version ends and p. 74 begins.] 1. The plan of the… Read more
Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making: II. The Homeric Language as the Language of an Oral Poetry
[This article was originally published in 1932 in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 43:1-50. The original pagination of the printed version is embedded within brackets in this electronic version: for example, {1|2} marks where p. 1 stops and p. 2 begins.] i. The Homeric Language and the Homeric Diction: Older… Read more
Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past
Nagy challenges the widely held view that the development of lyric poetry in Greece represents the rise of individual innovation over collective tradition. Arguing that Greek lyric represents a tradition in its own right, Nagy shows how the form of Greek epic is in fact a differentiation of forms found… Read more
L’Épithète Traditionnelle dans Homère: Essai sur un problème de style Homérique
Originally published in 1928, both for Société d’éditions “Les belles lettres” (Paris) and as a minor thesis (Doctorat es lettres) for the Université de Paris. Read more
El espejo de las Musas: El arte de la descripción en la Ilíada y Odisea
The subject of this book, which is an amplified version of the author’s MA thesis, is the art of description in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The art of description, or ekphrasis, is studied initially in general, seen in conjunction with such basic Homeric issues as formulaic language and similes,… Read more
Homeric Questions
The “Homeric Question” has vexed Classicists for generations. Was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey a single individual who created the poems at a particular moment in history? Or does the name “Homer” hide the shaping influence of the epic tradition during a long period of oral composition and transmission? In this… Read more
“Mixed Aorists” in Homeric Greek
“The Homeric poems provide some of the easiest reading in Greek literature, as well as some of the most rewarding, and so we are introduced to them at an early stage in our study of the language. But when we learn more, we discover that Homeric Greek is not so… Read more
Homeric Responses
The Homeric Iliad and Odyssey are among the world’s foremost epics. Yet, millennia after their composition, basic questions remain about them. Who was Homer—a real or an ideal poet? When were the poems composed—at a single point in time, or over centuries of composition and performance? And how were the poems committed to writing?… Read more
Homer the Preclassic
Homer the Preclassic considers the development of the Homeric poems—in particular the Iliad and Odyssey—during the time when they were still part of the oral tradition. Gregory Nagy traces the evolution of rival “Homers” and the different versions of Homeric poetry in this pretextual period, reconstructed over a time frame extending back from the… Read more