We are pleased to announce that Albert B. Lord's The Singer of Tales is now available, for free, in electronic form on the CHS website. Albert Lord's book builds on the work begun by Milman Parry during his search for the oral traditions in the Yugoslavia of 1933–35, when he began recording and studying a living tradition of oral poetry to further understanding of how Homeric poetry had been composed.… Read more
Discussion on the narrative plan of the Odyssey, focusing on the Phaeacians, and included the relationship between the poetic tradition, multiformity, and the reception of a performance; the lineage and role of Arete; the resonance between the female characters; poetic devices in the narrative. Read more
Our next Book Club selection is Chapter 3, "Heroes as Performers," of The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad, by Richard P. Martin, available online at the CHS website. Read more
One of the Core Vocabulary terms of Gregory Nagy's The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours is xenos, which he defines: "xenos [ξένος], plural xenoi [ξένοι] ‘stranger who should be treated like a guest by a host, or like a host by a guest; xeniā [ξενία] ‘reciprocal relationship between xenoi’; when the rules of xeniā do not work, a xenos risks defaulting to the status of simply stranger." Read more
We were pleased to welcome Efimia D. Karakantza (University of Patras, Greece), and Justin Arft (University of Missouri) for an Open House discussion: 'Within the Kyklos: Whose plan is this? Divine plans and poetic narrative in the Iliad and Odyssey'. Read more
