Homer and the epic
Subtitle: a shortened version of the songs of Homer
By: by G.S. Kirk.
Publisher: University Press
Published: 1965
Place of publication: Cambridge, Eng
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 242
Subjects: Homer.
Notes: Bibliography: p. 229-237.

Includes index.
Table of contents: title: The Homeric poems are oral. Heroic age and oral poetry -- The language of formulas in Homer -- The oral tradition and literacy -- Composition by theme -- Directness and originality in formular poetry -- Homer and modern oral poetry. The oral epic in Yugoslavia -- The life-cycle of an oral tradition -- Oral dictated texts -- The rise of Mycenae -- Life in a Late Bronze Age palace-state -- From the Achaean decline to the time of Homer -- Poetical possibilities of the Dark Age -- Was there Achaean epic poetry? -- Dark Age elements and Aeolic elements -- Some basic qualities -- The Iliad -- The Odyssey -- Subjects and styles -- The criterion of language -- Differences of material culture -- Structural difficulties in the Iliad -- Structural difficulties in the Odyssey -- Unity, real and imaginary -- The circumstances of monumental composition. ‘Homer’ and his region -- Audiences and occasions -- The date of the poems -- The relationship of the poems -- Two crucial phases of transmission -- The process of development.