What is it about?
Homer and the Epic Cycle considers how Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and the now mostly lost Cyclic Epics are related and interdependent, as shown by shared patterns, devices, story elements, and other traditional connections; and it outlines the process of memorialization, when viewed from an Oral Traditional Perspective.
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Why is it important?
Homer and the Epic Cycle addresses the age-old problem of how the Homeric epics have been viewed against the Cyclic by Aristotle, Alexandrians, and some literary scholars ever since. It replaces the literary with an Oral Traditional approach, by instead considering the role of the singer, patron/scribe, and scribe/poet, as well as the part played by writing and mythographers. The volume closes by offering possible causes for the lack of surviving Cyclic Epics.
Perspectives
Opening up new possibilities for the background of epic artifacts from the ancient world creates new possibilities for appreciating them. .
Andrew Porter
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Homer and the Epic Cycle, Brill Research Perspectives in Classical Poetry, January 2022, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/25892649-12340005.
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