Singing the Dead
Subtitle: A Model for Epic Evolution
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing
Published: July 30, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 171
ISBN-13: 9780820481654
Subjects: Ancient and Classical; Poetry; Literary Criticism; Epic poetry, Greek; Funeral rites and ceremonies, Ancient; Greece; History and criticism
Description: "This book outlines the evolution of Greek heroic epic from funeral laments and creates a model for epic evolution using Greek, other Indo-European, and non-Indo-European materials. Singing the Dead conceives the epic as a post-Mycenean phenomenon associated with the first migrations away from the ancestors' tombs to the Ionian coast. Physical separation from the tombs impelled the development of narration concerning the ancestors and the rite at the tomb was substituted by stories that eventually became epic."--BOOK JACKET.