How to Kill a Dragon
Subtitle: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: April 20, 2001
Language: eng
Number of pages: 630
ISBN-13: 9780195144130
First sentence: INDO-EUROPEAN is the name that has been given since the early 19th century to the large and well-defined genetic family which includes most of the languages of Europe, past and present, and which extended geographically, before the colonization of the New World, from Iceland and Ireland in the west across Europe and Asia Minor-where Hittite was spoken-through Iran to the northern half of the Indian subcontinent.
Description: In How to Kill a Dragon Calvert Watkins follows the continuum of poetic formulae in Indo-European languages, from Old Hittite to medieval Irish. He uses the comparative method to reconstruct traditional poetic formulae of considerable complexity that stretch as far back as the original common language. Thus, Watkins reveals the antiquity and tenacity of the Indo-European poetic tradition.