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IV. Art
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
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This description of current theories of oral composition is no more than a short account of something that is still being argued. Oral composition seems, however, the best working hypothesis, and the impact it has had on critics in Western Europe and America—and which it must eventually have on those of Italy and Germany—has been revolutionary. But the revolution is still, especially in the field of appreciation, in its destructive phase. The description of so much traditional material ‘has taken from Homeric critics a considerable body of phenomena which literary critics normally consider a legitimate and significant part of their study’. We seem to be denied the beauties of the mot juste, because the mots are not employed for their appropriateness to a specific context.
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References
page no 29 note 1 Combellack, , Comparative Literature 11 (1959), 208 Google Scholar, but cf. Russo, , ‘Homer against his tradition’, Arion 7 (1968), 275-95Google Scholar.
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page no 30 note 1 Flexibility of the Homeric Formula, 76 n.
page no 30 note 2 Very close proximity, cf. 304 ϊττποι ώκύττοδεΐ, but 309-10 ϊτπτοι βάρδιστοι θεΐειν!
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page no 31 note 1 Fenik, Typical Battle Scenes, 231 ff.
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page no 32 note 1 Whitman, C.H., Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), 102 ff.,CrossRefGoogle Scholar one of the few pieces of purely literary criticism to which Homeric scholarship has given rise.
page no 32 note 2 Whitman, op. cit., 249 ff.
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page no 32 note 6 Whallon, , YCS 17 (1961), 97 ff.Google Scholar, has some good remarks on the sources of the epithets.
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page no 35 note 4 e.g. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, 126 ff.
page no 36 note 1 The most recent discussion of the similes is that of Lee, D.J.N., The Similes of the Iliad and the Odyssey compared (Melbourne, 1964)Google Scholar, who supplies full lists. His interpretations sometimes appear to me too rigid. For other functions of the simile see Coffey, M., ‘The function of the Homeric Simile’, AJP 78 (1957), 113-32Google Scholar.
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page no 40 note 1 On the characterization of Achilles (and other principal figures) see Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition, 181 ff.
page no 40 note 2 Merit and Responsibility, 38 ff.
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page no 40 note 4 No scene has been more harried by the critics; see Kirk, Songs, 245 ff.; it is defended by Besslich, Schweigen-Verschweigen-Übergehen.
page no 41 note 1 Greeks and the Irrational, 33.
page no 41 note 2 Songs, 355 ff.
page no 41 note 3 Annie F., Dekker, Ironie in de Odyssee (Leiden, 1965 Google Scholar, with summary in English).
page no 41 note 4 I mean the Slaughter. As for the notorious Continuation, the arguments have been stated, definitively and at length, by Page, Homeric Odyssey, 101 ff. Yet I feel that something must have stood there since the Slaughter leaves too much unsettled.