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Ajax: Un héros qui vient de loin
This book, made available with the permission of Giampiero Scafoglio, focuses on the character of Ajax, an important hero in the Homeric Iliad and the so-called Epic Cycle. In the “Cyclic” Little Iliad, he is even the protagonist of an ethically dubious episode: the ‘judgment of arms’, with its tragic… Read more
Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part III: Epilogue
2023.01.02 | By Gregory Nagy Epilogue §0. The book had started with Hippolytus the Charioteer and now ends with Achilles the Charioteer. By now we have seen the supreme prestige of charioteering as a primary form of athletics at the Olympics and at other Panhellenic festivals—most notably at the festival… Read more
Five essays, ready for newer annotations, centering on theories about oral traditions: Orality and literacy – Essay Five
Essay 5: Revisiting Plato’s Rhapsody 2022.2.06 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The text of this essay, originally published in Classical Inquiries 2020.06.26, is a pre-edited version of my contribution to an online colloquium, Poetic (Mis)quotations in Plato, the collected essays for which reside in a special issue of Classics@;… Read more
Five essays, ready for newer annotations, centering on theories about oral traditions: Orality and literacy – Essay Four
Essay 4. Homeric problems and bibliographical challenges, Part II: More on the performances of rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia 2022.1.30 | By Gregory Nagy 0. This essay, originally published in Classical Inquiries 2018.11.30, picks up from where I left off in Classical Inquiries 2018.11.22. Here again… Read more
Five essays, ready for newer annotations, centering on theories about oral traditions: Orality and literacy – Essay Three
Essay 3. Homeric problems and bibliographical challenges, Part I: On the performances of rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia 2022.1.23 | By Gregory Nagy This essay was originally published in Classical Inquiries 2018.11.22. §0. No one who claims expertise in the study of Homer will ever have the… Read more
A History of the Proverb in Greece and Rome
What is a “proverb”? What is a “sententia”? What is a “saying”? To many readers, the question may seem superfluous, and the answer rather obvious, if even one of the greatest scholars of proverbs, namely Archer Taylor, declared that “an incommunicable quality tells us this sentence is proverbial, and this one is not.” To all of us, in fact, proverbs, sententiae, sayings, and many more (maxims, apophthegms, aphorisms, and so… Read more
Five essays, ready for newer annotations, centering on theories about oral traditions: Orality and literacy – Essay Two
Essay 2. Orality and literacy revisited 2022.1.9 | By Gregory Nagy A slightly rewritten version of an essay originally published 2017 in Classical Inquiries, https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/orality-and-literacy-revisited/. §1. I am surprised that I have never been asked the question: since Albert Lord was your mentor, and since you count yourself among… Read more
Ancient Greek heroes, athletes, poetry Part III: Essay 10: Achilles the charioteer
2023.01.02 | By Gregory Nagy Essay 10. Achilles the charioteer 10§0. In the Odyssey, where the death of Achilles in battle is being retrospectively narrated, Homeric poetry eulogizes the dead hero for being the master charioteer that he had been in his epic lifetime. In the battle scenes narrated by… Read more
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