• Homer’s Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts

    Author(s):
    Elton Barker (see profile) , Joel Christensen
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    Ancient Greece & Rome
    Subject(s):
    Homer, Epic poetry, Intertextuality
    Item Type:
    Book
    Tag(s):
    Epic Cycle, Iliad, Odyssey, Thebes
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/jnyg-q237
    Abstract:
    Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are the only early Greek heroic epics to have survived the transition to writing, even though extant evidence indicates that they emerged from a thriving oral culture. Among the missing are the songs of Boeotian Thebes. Homer’s Thebes examines moments in the Iliad and Odyssey where Theban characters and thematic engagements come to the fore. Rather than sifting through these appearances to reconstruct lost poems, Elton Barker and Joel Christensen argue that the Homeric poems borrow heroes from Thebes to address key ideas—about politics, time, and genre—that set out the unique superiority of these texts in performance. By using evidence from Hesiod and fragmentary sources attributed to Theban tradition, Barker and Christensen explore Homer’s appropriation of Theban motifs of strife and distribution to promote his tale of the sack of Troy and the returns home. As Homer’s Thebes shows, this Theban material sheds light on the exceptionality of the Homeric epics through the notions of poetic rivalry and Panhellenism. Furthermore, by emphasizing a nonhierarchical model of “reading” the epics derived from oral-formulaic poetics, this book contributes to recent debates about allusion, neoanalysis, and intertextuality.
    Notes:
    Final proofs. The book is available Open Access via the CHS website (https://chs.harvard.edu/book/barker-elton-and-joel-christensen-homers-thebes/) or is available to purchase from Harvard UP (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237926).
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Book     Show details
    Publisher:
    Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University Press
    Pub. Date:
    2020
    ISBN:
    9780674237926
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    11 months ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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