By Gregory Nagy

By Gregory Nagy

Text and reperformance: do you really need a text for your reperformance?

posted 2021.06.24, to be reperformed 2021.06.30 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This presentation offers friendly criticism of the views of classicists who use such terms as "text" and "reperformance" without fully taking into account various comparative perspectives that have for some time been made available by way of typological descriptions of "live" performance as observed and analyzed in a wide variety of ethnographical studies. Read more

By Gregory Nagy,

Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part I: Twelve Olympian Essays – Essay 6: Reconstructing Indo-European mythological traditions that shaped the role of Hēraklēs as athlete

2022.07.25 | By Gregory Nagy §0. Applying methods of reconstruction as I outlined them in the Excursus of Essay 5, I will now start to reconstruct what I have described as Indo-European mythological traditions that shaped the role of Hēraklēs as an athlete, or, to say it better, the role… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

A sampling of comments on the Herakles of Euripides: ready for annotation

2022.03.28, replacing the version in C.I. 2018.04.20 | By Gregory Nagy The comments in this posting about the Herakles of Euripides derive from a set of compressed notes I had started writing in 1999. These notes were meant as a companion to the Herakles as translated by Robert Potter—his translations of Euripides first appeared in two volumes, 1781 and 1783—and as adapted by Casey Dué and Mary Ebbott in 1999. Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Poetics of Repetition in Homer, second edition, ready for annotation

2022.01.17 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This article was originally published in 2004 in Greek Ritual Poetics (ed. D. Yatromanolakis and P. Roilos) 139–148. Hellenic Studies 3. Cambridge, MA and Washington, DC. There followed an online version (Nagy 2020.11.02), which, like the earlier printed version, did not… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Observations on Greek dialects in the late second millennium BCE: the original essay of 2011, updated in 2022 via annotations

2022.01.03 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The core of this essay (Nagy 2022.01.03) is an English-language version of a lecture I originally delivered in Athens, over ten years ago, at the Academy of Athens on the occasion of my induction as a corresponding member of the Academy (Nagy 2011.04.06). A… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

On the picturing of an eagle flying down from Mount Ida

2021.12.20 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This brief set of comments is about two enormous mountain-ranges. One of the two dominates the central zone of the island of Crete and the other, the Plain of Troy. Both of these massive highlands were called Ida in the ancient world. And… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

The so-called Mother of the Mountain and a possible reference to her in Linear A inscriptions found on two Minoan double-axes

2021.12.13 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In an article I published over half a century ago (Nagy 1963), I drew attention to four “Linear A” syllabic characters inscribed on a golden double-axe dating from Minoan times, first published by my late colleague and friend Emily Vermeule (1959). In my… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Jean Bollack in English, a standalone essay based on a foreword to his book The Art of Reading: From Homer to Paul Celan (2016)

2016.04.27 (the original version, published as a foreword), 2021.12.06 (standalone essay, a revised version, published online here) | By Gregory Nagy Cover of Jean Bollack’s The Art of Reading: From Homer to Paul Celan, image used with the permission of the Center for Hellenic Studies. §0.1. The picture… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

On the Shaping of the Lyric Canon in Athens

2021.11.29 | By Gregory Nagy[*] Attic red-figure cup by Oltos, ca. 510 BCE. Detail of exterior: Anacreon (named, ANAKΡΕΟΝ) with lyre and plectrum. British Museum, inv. no. 1836,0224.145 (Vases E18). Image © The Trustees of the British Museum, used under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Two essays about the Epic Cycle

2021.11.22 | By Gregory Nagy Fresco from Pylos (close-up of a reconstruction), warrior in chariot, ca. 1350 BCE. Based on Plate 123 in the first edition (1969) of a book by Mabel L. Lang, The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia. Vol. II, The Frescoes (Princeton University Press, paperback… Read more