Classics@3: The Homerizon; Conceptual Interrogations in Homeric Studies

Guest editors: Richard Armstrong and Casey Dué.

This colloquium had as its twin goals:

1) the serious interrogation of cherished assumptions about Homeric 'culture' and 'texuality' and
2) the exploration of the wider cultural significance of the perennial Homeric Question(s).

These two goals were linked in that the explorations outlined for 2) quite often led to the serious interrogations of 1). For example, when we look into the influence of a particular scenario of Homeric composition – that of the illiterate bard who speaks/sings for his entire people – we immediately hit upon a set of assumptions about the unity of the Homeric corpus, the unity of its supposed "national culture," the nature of its style and composition, the organic links between the narrative of the poems and the history of the Hellenic peoples, and the paradigmatic or foundational status of this Homer for other national cultures.

The organizers' assumption was that questions of reception draw vitally upon the most essential questions posed by the text, and help to recalibrate one's sense of the Homeric textual horizon – what we have called the Homerizon, deliberately invoking the Greek active participle homerizon, "doing Homer." In plainer language, we wanted to investigate quite simply: throughout history, what does it mean to "do Homer"? The scholars who attended were openly invited to take a broader view of the issue of Homer than that fought out in the usual philological and archaeological venues.

Contents

Ellen Aitken, "An Early Christian Homerizon? Decoy, Direction, and Doxology." [PDF Version (562 Kb)]

Richard H. Armstrong, "From Huponoia to Paranoia: On the Secular Co-optation of Homeric Religion in Vico, Feuerbach, and Freud." [PDF Version (388 Kb)]

Egbert J. Bakker, "Rhapsodes, Bards, and Bricoleurs: Homerizing Literary Theory." [PDF Version (185 Kb)]

Jonathan Burgess, "Tumuli of Achilles." [PDF Version (4821 Kb)]

Casey Dué, "The Invention of Ossian." [PDF Version (1794 Kb)]

Mary Ebbott, "Butler's Authoress of the Odyssey: Gendered Readings of Homer, Then and Now." [PDF Version (354 Kb)]

Douglas Frame, "The Homeric Poems after Ionia: A Case in Point." [PDF Version (2519 Kb)]

Barbara Graziosi, "Homer and the Definition of Epic." [PDF Version (251 Kb)]

Constanze Güthenke, "The Philhellenic Horizon: Homeric Prolegomena to the Greek War of Independence." [PDF Version (453 Kb)]

Johannes Haubold, "Homer between East and West." [PDF Version (237 Kb)]

Silke Knippschild, "Homer to the Defense: The Accademia degli Incogniti and the opera Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria in Early Modern Venice." [PDF Version (284 Kb)]

Richard Martin, "Cretan Homers: Tradition, Politics, Fieldwork." [PDF Version (370 Kb)]

Leonard Muellner, "Discovery Procedures and Principles for Homeric Research." [PDF Version (226 Kb)]

James Porter, "Making and Unmaking: The Achaean Wall and the Limits of Fictionality in Homeric Criticism." [PDF (496 kb)]

Cashman Kerr Prince, "Poeta sovrano? Horizons of Homer in Twentieth-Century English-Language Poetry." [PDF Version (707 Kb)]

Tom Walsh, "Cretan Homer's Fragment of Tradition." [PDF Version (231 Kb)]