Books of a Nature not Necessarily Academic but Nice*

Textkit Community Civilization and Culture of the Greeks and Romans
21

Homer comes across much better in translation than Virgil, in part precisely because Virgil’s art is so closely bound up in the words–both their physical sound and their connotations. In this respect, while the Aeneid is his masterpiece, of course, in some ways I prefer the Bucolics and expecially the Georgics. Some lines send shivers down my spine. To appreciate Virgil fully (and I understand that “appreciate” reflects an old-fashioned and problematized approach) you have to have not only all of Homer but also a fair amount of other Greek and Latin literature under your belt. Fortunately, I don’t have to chose between Homer and Virgil.

One (very expensive) book I recently read with a lot of satisfaction on the Bucolics (but which is also illuminating on the Georgics and even the Aeneid) is Gregson Davis, Parthenope: The Interplay of Ideas in Vergilian Bucolic.

22

Victor and Qimmik, I was expecting a defence of Virgil along those lines… Anyway, I don’t know Latin well enough to read Virgil yet. I don’t know if I ever will. Anyway, I wanted to read Virgil to be able to read Dante’s Divine Comedy, not for the sake of Virgil. Since Virgil bored me to death, I haven’t started Dante either. And I don’t know Italian either, not to mention Mediaval Italian, so Dante too would be in translation. Unlucky me. Life is short and Greek is long, no time for Latin.

23

Paul, I agree with you on how short life is and how difficult it is to develop an appreciation of so many poets, but I don’t believe Virgil (or any other poet) is lost completely in translation, or that having some of the original language suddenly “unlocks” that poet for you. We can be more nuanced.

Qimmik I hear you on the “appreciation” part. For me, its simple: We can develop a sensible appreciation/critique for ourselves providing we’re aware that our views are not the ancients, that the primary culture is more important. Secondly, we can develop an appreciation for ourselves (think of it as our reward) as long as we avoid this horrid, flabby, British Victorian tweed wearing idiotic “hue hue hue X is the best poet ever” lark. Really? Really? Mr Cobblespluttersowrthiton? Please tell me what you know of world literature with your grand total of 4 languages. Please. Please!

That sort of crap it what killed the subject, when it became a sort of gentlemen’s club of taste. Unfortunately you see these people around you all the time, far far too often…yes even in places like Oxford and Cambridge.

But! Since we’re on Virgil what about book recommendations? I’m only really aware of those heady academic studies myself and I’m not sure what the equivalent of Whitman etc would be. Conte’s Poetry of Pathos?

24

Conte’s chapter on hypallage in Virgil is very illuminating.

With Virgil you have to decide whether or not you belong to the “Harvard School”. Even though I took some courses with Clausen during the Viet Nam era, I’m not completely of that persuasion. I think that Virgil was to some extent an Augustan apologist, but everything Virgil wrote is permeated with a pervasive sadness that undercuts and “problematizes” (to use a word that currently seems to be fashionable) the propaganda. And of course the way the propaganda is presented in the Aeneid is stunning, in addition to everything else.

Brooks Otis and Michael Putnam have written some good books about Virgil. One of the best older books about Virgil, which has been translated into English, is Richard Heinze’s Vergil’s Epic Technique. Also Poeschl.

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Actually it’s hard to get away from the Harvard school readings in the UK where it’s been pretty much the dominant model, I mean in Oxford probably largely due to the influence of scholars like Lyne but it seems to be pretty popular. I myself…I don’t know I think it’s quite praise wielding but I think the major problems are the way we view the praise. We’re always a bit…suspicious or snobbish about the way Horace or Virgil seem to us whereas I think the nature of such a thing was markedly different in Roman society. More acceptable, more typical and expected.

I started to read Putnam’s Interpretation and Influence and just really disliked it by the way. I doubt I’ll ever finish it, I don’t think I even bothered taking notes.

See, quite a lot of the major criticism of the Augustan era is quite alien to me. In general the modus of Latinists also is quite different: they ask different questions and are interested in different social phenomena, if they go beyond the texts at all (ooo naughty :smiling_imp: ). I recently read Tarrant’s commentary on Aeneid XII and really liked it. I believe he is, aptly, Clausen’s successor in the pope chair as well.

For my money the single most interesting Virgilian scholar is, of all people, Horsfall. Partially because in his discussion of mythography, cult, quellen etc he’s quite Hellenist in his manner.

26

Maybe I am out of my depth in the midst of all this discussion of Vergilian criticism, or maybe I simply feel less dependence on what others have said in order to be able to arrive at some appreciation of Vergil’s art. Either way, it would be interesting to see more in the way of personal responses to Vergil’s poetry, and less in the way of criticism of criticism.

27

My previous might have come out a bit rude. That wasn’t the point. Anyway, I’m a big big fan of Homer; when I read Virgil, I see him adapting Homer all the time in a way that I feel just isn’t right (not right for me I mean, not for everybody necessarily…), probably partly because I read it in translation, and partly because it doesn’t have the simplicity of oral poetry, which is everywhere in Homer. Apollonios Rhodios is very similar to Virgil in many respects, but I could stand it because 1) the substance matter interested me more, and 2) I could read him in the original.

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“I see him adapting Homer all the time”

This isn’t adaptation–it’s engaging deeply with the poetry of the past–not just Homer, but Euripides, Theocritus, Hesiod, Apollonius, Ennius, Lucretius etc.–and creating new poetry out of it. But I think Virgil doesn’t submit to translation as well as Homer because much of what makes him worth reading lies in the specifically Latin music of his verse. Virgil’s verse, and Latin verse generally, is more carefully shaped than Homer, with elaborate and complex patterning of words and sounds. Virgil’s verse is, for want of a better word, more sensuous than Homer’s. The Latin hexameter is very different from the Greek hexameter–there is a constant interplay between the quantitative character of the meter and the Latin stress accent, a tension between the two at the beginning of the verse and a resolution at the end. (In Greek, and particularly in Homer, the segmentation of the verse into cola by caesuras and diaereses, and enjambments, are the key elements that provide life to the verse.) Virgil uses everyday Latin words in striking new ways. All of this doesn’t come across in translation, even in a good translation. You don’t look for simplicity in Virgil (though I’m not sure Homer is quite so “simple”, either)–Virgil is complex.

But for me, at least, he has the endless ability to produce turns of phrase that are utterly surprising and yet completely natural at the same time. And that’s just at the level of the individual verse.

“it would be interesting to see more in the way of personal responses to Vergil’s poetry, and less in the way of criticism of criticism.” This started as a discussion of books, but feel free to contribute some personal responses if that’s what you’d prefer to see.

29

Are you suggesting that we use books because somehow we’re not as clever as you are for simply giving your opinion? It couldn’t be, could it, then when dealing with a long dead poet and their civilisation we simply recognise that our viewpoints and responses are somehow not theirs? hm?

This thread is, as the title suggests, for the discussion of books pertaining to the subject and whilst I’m sure it will become littered with personal readings and opinions as it progresses (since such things are necessary) they certainly shan’t take main stage here. You’re welcome, encouraged even, to make a new thread devoted to Virgil and the Aeneid if you like but any discussion here must be at least somewhat related to books.

Paul I don’t think anyone thinks you were rude, dw. Eh I kind of feel the same about Virgil, which is why my readings try so hard to apply tools of Homeric criticism - which is essentially a bad idea. I admittedly privilege Roman elements in Latin literature over Greek ones anyway. Even as early as Livius Andronicus we can discern native elements but…I don’t know. I don’t know why the same scholar can talk about how clever the Greeks were for using x, y, and z from the “Near East” but then berate the Romans for being dependant copycats. How odd. So that can be a fun game.

I like to concentrate on the use of Homer in terms of…well it’s hardly agonistic poetry like you get with the Greeks but its not adaptation or translation either but a sort of re-modelling. Actually in general Virgil’s use of Homer is something I find very troubling, he seems to deliberately play with expectations, I mean Turnus and co constantly think they’re Greeks in the Iliad fighting the Trojans and look how that turns out for them. :laughing:

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No offence was intended. It would be nice if the same could be said of your reply, though your pugilistic stance makes that difficult.

Reading critical opinions on long dead poets can certainly help shed light on the differences between a modern perspective and the perspective of the ancients, if that is what you mean, but reading what has been said by critics is never a substitute for reading the poets themselves. This last point is as far as my argument went.

By all means let this thread remain a platform for the discussion of books, but be good enough to acknowledge that, in your desire to admonish, you have shown as much willingness to take the thread off-topic as I have.

31

It is always good to keep reminding ourselves of the two iron laws of the internet:

Anything you write will be read by others as being less friendly than you intended.
Anything you read will have been written with a much more friendly intent than comes over to you.

(And this is advice is very much “Do as I say rather than as I do” :frowning: )

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Happily would we follow David’s wise words. However I’m going to have to ask you to re-read your statement if you honestly feel that was ok…well…Whatever, as I’ve stated, this is off topic now so let’s steer back.

33

Scribo ergo stumm?

For the Aeneid, Horsfall can be tough going but is full of idiosyncratic delights. But Austin’s commentaries, though now pretty old, do not pale. A scholar who loved literature, and it shows. (The only thing to be said against him is that he could be held responsible for the comparative neglect, until recently, of the books he didn’t cover.)

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Scribo ergo stumm?

For the Aeneid, Horsfall can be tough going but is full of idiosyncratic delights. But Austin’s commentaries, though now pretty old, do not pale. A scholar who loved literature, and it shows. (The only thing to be said against him is that he could be held responsible for the comparative neglect, until recently, of the books he didn’t cover.)

35

Wonderful thread, thanks guys! Might I be so bold as to ask, in a similar vein, for five or six titles specifically on Homer, for a classics oriented but still less than professional academic readership? Say you were going to teach a seminar on Homer and Greek epic poetry to a group of highly-motivated undergraduates, what books would you put on your syllabus as “classics” in the field?

(Perhaps I should start another thread for this?)

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As far as I understand, that’s exactly the sort of thing this thread is meant for, Greg…

The “real” classics in Homer I haven’t read myself. Newer books keep mentioning them, so you pretty much know what’s in them without even reading them (I guess). Such are F. A. Wolf’s Prolegomena ad Homerum (from the 18th century, an English translation came out in the 80’s) and Milman Parry’s The Making of Homeric Verse.

Homer books which I guess fit into that category (a couple of these are probably only accessible through a (university) library, since they are expensive/unavailable). Just a couple of books that come to my mind at random; though only the first two I can recommend to beginners without any reserve:

  • Jasper Griffin: Homer: The Odyssey. A good all-round introduction to the Odyssey. As the title suggests, doesn’t cover the Iliad, though there’s much overlap of course…
  • The Homer Encyclopedia. An up-to-date coverage of about any subject of Homer in encyclopedia form. For lay people and specialists alike. Three parts, £350 on Amazon.co.uk.
  • Ann Amory Parry: Blameless Aegisthus. For students who are maybe a bit more advanced. The author set out to show that the Homeric epithet isn’t as pointless as it seems, only often we don’t understand them. She takes ἀμύμων as a case in point and shows it doesn’t mean ‘blameless’. This book is for someone who’s particularly interested about Homeric epithets. Old book, hard to get probably without a good library.
  • Denys Page: Folk Tales in Homer’s Odyssey. This book might be old-fashioned in some respects, but it definitely might interest somebody.

Then there’s a great number of commentaries to help you get through the Greek texts, on individual books or longer chunks of text.

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Perfectly fine question, though I would assume such undergraduates (if they’re Classics UGs) would get involved in the “proper” stuff straight away. I also know departments other than Classics will teach the Odyssey in translation and pair it with a lot of stuff on reception and narratology which I can’t really comment on I’m afraid. I would basically suggest something like:

Jasper Griffin “Homer on Life and Death” - a brilliant book which translates, I think, all the passages from Homer. It includes copious parallels, comments from the scholia and some wonderful readings etc, everyone here so far has rightly praised it. I worry about availability and price though.

B. Graziosi and J Haubold “Homer: The Resonance of Epic”. A wonderful book meant to introduce the newbie to the different aspects of oral transmission and performance.

H Clarke “The Art of the Odyssey” is a good introduction if you can get it cheap enough, might be worth to substitute Griffin’s student’s introduction to the Odyssey, it has an excellent section on comparative epic and mentions folk motifs and such like. Though I admit I don’t remember the book very well.

I think, roughly, that would be it. I should say that obviously a half decent commentary like Wilcock’s to follow. I also ought to recommend Redfield’s “Nature and Culture in the Iliad” as a popular book. The companions out there are often useful too, the Cambridge Companion to Homer covers a variety of interesting topics and is quite a thorough introduction.

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Wonderful, thank you. I’m noting all of these down, and I’ll be purchasing a good deal of them. (I’m hesitating between making 2014 a Homer year or a Heidegger year; as a Germanist, I’m much further along in the latter. :wink: ) In any case, please feel free to throw in the “proper” Homeralia as well, I’ll be reading the Greek text, using the Brenner and Seymour commentaries from Perseus (in the software from Logos) so anything on Epic Greek, archaeology, history, etc. is highly welcome.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should have said an introductory graduate level class syllabus. I’ve taken to reading the BMCR reviews as they’re sent out every day, a real treasure trove of classics books.

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Companions and such, however odious their proliferation in many ways is, are very useful, for teachers and students alike. The Oxford Companion makes a differently oriented counterweight to the Cambridge one, and there’s also Powell-Morris New Companion to Homer (meant to replace the Wace-Stubbings classic), harshly reviewed by Janko in BMCR but covering a lot of ground. The new Homer Encyclopedia has been mentioned; that’s a must-have. (I should declare a minor interest in these last two, but I gain nothing from sales. It’s the publishers of these things that rake in all the money.)

Some of the single-author books mentioned are very dated (well, all except Graziosi-Haubold, really). Page is old-fashioned in all respects, and his rhetoric seems tiresome today. (Not that he wasn’t a great scholar.) I’m not surprised that Scribo doesn’t well remember Clarke’s Odyssey book. It’s the least memorable book on Homer I’ve ever read. (I am surprised he commends Griffin; I’d have expected him to damn him as a bloody aesthete; but then I’m only just getting to know you guys.) You’ll be wanting to introduce your students to different critical approaches (you can’t get by without confronting narratology, for instance, and the oral/literate question keeps shifting its dimensions and contours, as does historicity), but the Companions and the Encyclopedia will guide you here, and possibly give you all you need. They’re expensive; just be sure your library has them and you have them on hand. There ought to be a good book on Homeric style, but I can’t think of one.

Some commentators are better than others (I don’t know the Brenner and Seymour ones; Leaf is on Perseus isn’t he?), and of course they’re pitched at different levels. Willcock is excellent if you’re reading in translation, and maybe even if you’re not. I expect you’ll want to expose your students to some really good commentary. Of the Cambridge Iliad comms Janko’s is generally considered the best (a judgment I’d agree with, without putting down any of the others except maybe Kirk’s), and is certainly the most engaging. For the Odyssey there’s the three-volume set by Heubeck and others, internally differing according to individual commentator in a more pronounced way than the Cambridge Iliad set. I’m assuming you can’t count on knowledge of any language other than English, but when it comes to Homer English-speakers are truly blessed. Don’t know what you’re proposing to read, or how much.

I’ll leave it to others to recommend particular books. But Graziosi’s Inventing Homer, not so much about Homer as about “Homer” in the archaic and classical periods, is a breath of fresh air.

You said “Homer and Greek Epic Poetry.” If that’s what you meant, of course there’s Hesiod, the Cycle and other early epic, and the Homeric Hymns, all these now with excellent Loebs by Glenn Most (Hes.) and Martin West (early epic and H.H.), to go no further forward. It’s a lot for a single seminar!

40

Well obviously Page et al may be a bit old fashioned but that’s kind of what this thread is about, not necessarily the stuff you’d find on proper reading lists. Also what would be a good recommendation in lieu of page for things like folktales then? Only Page on the Odyssey, Carpenter on the Iliad and, famously, Kakridis in both come to mind. I can think of some modern articles by M. Davies and I think one article in the New Brill Companion mentions folktales but that’s it. The problem is the more modern you get the more you rely on article format.

Ah I’m not going to damn Griffin, I think aesthete or not it’s a very solid book and I find it much more palatable than modern broad treatments of the poet. I also think the book is much less guilty than his seminal article on the epic cycle which is quite damning on aesthetic grounds of his material and I guess it’s easier to side with Burgess, Marks et al on this stuff.

I also think the Homeric Encyclopaedia is, again, probably a bit much at around £350 or so. I do agree I like it however and there are so many great articles there.

I think the only sensible way to introduce people to modern critical approaches probably would be the companions, I mean there’s a chapter on narratology in the Brill Comp which is easily digestible whereas reading De Jong’s stuff can be time consuming. Actually I really do like both companions, the more literary Cambs one and the Brill’s. I’m not sure what you mean by Oxford companion, do you mean the selection of “readings”? In which case yes that should be read if only for Burkert on Rhapsodes, Griffin on the Epic Cycle and Morris and the abuse of Homer.

On specific topics it’s hard to say, hard to draw up a short bibliography. I mean for Homer and history/archaeology I’d want said student to have a decent knowledge of both the Mycenaean period and the 8-7th centuries - which rely on his archaeology tutors doing their job first. Then I’d want a decent knowledge of Homeric language…there are a myriad studies to recommend but I think given the context West’s “Rise of the Greek Epic” article is a decent pick and then something on oral transmission - which is an area classical scholars are pretty crap at so we’d have to turn to anthropologists for oral traditions, psychologists for cultural memory and so on because I really don’t trust classicists with this.

Homer and Greek Epic is a great idea, just because it includes so much. The great loebs have been recommended above me so I’d go on to recommend Burgess on the Tradition of the Trojan War and the Epic Cycle (I think it’s called) and then to chase up individual bits of bibliography depending on what poems you like. Hesiod has his own mammoth bibliography, for the hymns there is a recent collection of edited articles by Faulkner which are interested and Hunter has an amazing collection of edited articles on the katalogos.