Poetic Traditions in Homeric Epic (the Iliad and the Odyssey)

FAIN: FA-57142-13

Christopher Faraone
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)

I intend to write a book that will argue that the poets of the Iliad and the Odyssey knew, used and even parodied shorter hexametrical genres (for example: oracles and laments) and that knowledge of this feature of Homeric poetics allows us important insights into a variety of Homeric scenes, for example Helen's use of pharmaka to assuage the grief of her dinner guests or Circe's instructions to Odysseus.

Associated Products

Seaside Altars of Apollo Delphinios, Embedded Hymns and the Tripartite Structure of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (Article)
Title: Seaside Altars of Apollo Delphinios, Embedded Hymns and the Tripartite Structure of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo
Author: Christopher Faraone
Abstract: Forthcoming spring 2018
Year: 2018
Format: Journal
Publisher: Greece & Rome

On the Eve of Epic: Did the Chryses Episode in Iliad 1 Begin its Life as a Separate Homeric Hymn? (Book Section)
Title: On the Eve of Epic: Did the Chryses Episode in Iliad 1 Begin its Life as a Separate Homeric Hymn?
Author: Christopher Faraone
Editor: I. Kliger
Editor: B. Maslov
Abstract: This chapter undertakes a defamiliarizing reading of the dominant Archaic genre, the Homeric epic. Taking his cue from Bakhtin’s theorization of the novel as a hybrid genre, Faraone points out that the Homeric poems analogously draw on and incorporate preexistent genres. In the case of the Iliad, a text that is to a great extent constituted within an oral tradition, the recognition of its multi-genred nature reveals divergent intents that a holistic reading (in the Neo-Unitarian paradigm of Homeric criticism) would seek to downplay or explain away. Faraone applies this approach to what is one of the best-known texts in European literature, the first book of the Iliad. Pointing to inconsistencies in characterization of Achilles and Agamemnon, as well as to a number of other textual clues, he proposes to regard a substantial segment of the book—the Chryses episode—as a cult hymn originally performed in a ritual context and then incorporated into the Panhellenic text of Homer.
Year: 2015
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Book Title: Persistent Forms: Explorations in Historical Poetics
ISBN: 978-0823264858

Circe's Advice and the Oral Tradition of Ancient Greek Hexametrical Oracles (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Circe's Advice and the Oral Tradition of Ancient Greek Hexametrical Oracles
Author: Christopher Faraone
Abstract: presented Nov. 2016 between 11/19 and 11/22
Date: 11/19/2016
Conference Name: Society of Biblical Literature annual conference

Empedocles the Poet, Philosopher, Scientist … and Magician? (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Empedocles the Poet, Philosopher, Scientist … and Magician?
Author: Christopher Faraone
Abstract: presented at the University of Chicago. First presented as the keynote lecture at conference "Poetry, Philosophy, and Science in the Archaic Age" at the University of South Florida in March 2016
Date: 5/3/2016
Conference Name: Workshop on Ancient Societies, University of Chicago

Female Lament in the Iliad (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Female Lament in the Iliad
Abstract: This Geballe workshop examines the relationship of oral and written literature from a multidisciplinary perspective, considering topics such as the transmission and textualization of folk literature, the interplay between spoken word and written text, and the sociology of reading and performance. The general scholarly consensus has been that, the poet of the Iliad was the first to imitate spoken dirges improvised antiphonally by women at funerals and to render these speeches in hexametrical form. I will argue to the contrary that the embedded laments in the Iliad provide us with the earliest evidence for a short genre of hexametrical lament chanted primarily by women at the funerals of relatives and in the cult of Adonis. As we shall see, the very early existence of the latter tradition greatly helps explain why the poet uniquely likens both Kassandra and Briseis to the goddess Aphrodite at the moment when they begin to keen out loud for a dead young man – that is: just as the goddess once did for Adonis.
Author: Christopher Faraone
Date: 2/12/2016
Location: Stanford University
Primary URL: https://arts.stanford.edu/event/christopher-faraone-u-chicago-female-lament-in-the-iliad-the-play-of-hexametrical-genres-in-homeric-epic/

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