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A characteristic of Homer's style is the use of epithets, as in "rosy-fingered" Dawn or "swift-footed" Achilles.Epithets are used because of the constraints of the dactylic hexameter (i.e., it is convenient to have a stockpile of metrically fitting phrases to add to a name) and because of the oral transmission of the poems; they are mnemonic aids to the singer and the audience alike.
Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows (writing – for a long syllable, u for a short, and u u for a position that may be a long or two shorts):
Emily Wilson was born in 1971 in Oxford, England to a family of scholars, [1] and is a professor of classics at the University of Pennsylvania. [2] Wilson completed her undergraduate degree in literae humaniores at the University of Oxford in 1994, a masters degree in English Renaissance literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1996, and a Ph.D. in classical and comparative literature ...
The Odyssey of Homer is an English translation of the Odyssey of Homer by British poet Alexander Pope.It was published in five volumes between 1725 and 1726. As with his translation of the Iliad, Pope changed the metre from the dactylic hexameter used by the Homeric Greek text into heroic couplets, rhyming pairs of lines in iambic pentameter.
According to Bernard Knox, "For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero". [45] Odysseus's identity is discovered by the housekeeper, Eurycleia , as she is washing his feet and discovers an old scar Odysseus received during a boar hunt.
Illustration from Gustav Schwab of Odysseus killing the suitors Ulysses' revenge on Penelope's suitors (Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1814). In the Epic Cycle, Antinous (also Antinoüs; Latin: Antinous) or Antinoös (Ancient Greek: Ἀντίνοος, romanized: Antínoös), was the Ithacan son of Eupeithes, best known for his role in Homer's Odyssey.
[1] It is an epithet sometimes applied to animals such as horses at Hom. Il. 2.839; oxen at Od.18.372; and an eagle at Il. 15.690 (cf. Hyginus' calling the eagle that tormented Prometheus an aethonem aquilam at Fabulae 31.5.). [2] The eagle who tormented Prometheus, Aethon, was the child of the monsters Typhon and Echidna. [3]
Consistency of style: anything that appears only once in Homer — an unusual poetic image, an unusual word (a hapax legomenon), or an unusual epithet (e.g. the epithet "Kyllenian Hermes" in Odyssey 24.1) — tends to be rejected. No repetitions: if a line or passage is repeated word-for-word, one of the exemplars is often rejected.