Audible Punctuation focuses on the pause in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey,
both as a compositional feature and as a performative aspect of
delivery, arguing for the possibilities and limits of expressing phrases
in performance. Ronald Blankenborg’s analysis of metrical, rhythmical,
syntactical, and phonological phrasing shows that the text of the
Homeric epic allows for different options for performative pause—a
phonetic phenomenon evidenced by phonology.
From the ubiquitous compositional pauses in sense and metrical surface structure, Audible Punctuation selects
the pauses that, under specific phonetic circumstances, double as rests
of some duration during a performance. In this way, Blankenborg
identifies those places in the verses that a performer of Homeric poetry
was most likely to have used as opportunities to pause. The
distribution of pauses over Homer’s hexameters proves to be irregular
and unpredictable because phonological phrases and grammatical clauses
differ considerably in the way they terminate. The mismatch of prosodic
and other levels of phrasing draws attention to the need to reassess
stylistic issues, notably enjambment.
Graeme D. Bird examines a small group of early papyrus manuscripts of Homer’s Iliad,
known as the Ptolemaic papyri, which, although fragmentary, are the
oldest surviving physical evidence of the text of the Iliad, dating from
the third to the first centuries BCE.
These papyri have been described as “eccentric” or even “wild” by
some scholars. They differ significantly from the usual text of the Iliad,
sometimes showing lines with different wording, at other times
including so-called “interpolated” lines that are completely absent from
our more familiar version.
Whereas some scholars denigrate these papyri because of their
“eccentricity,” this book analyzes their unusual readings and shows that
in fact they present authentic variations on the Homeric text, based on
the variability characteristic of oral performance.
This collective volume unites ten papers by international specialists in
history, philology, linguistics, palaeography and archaeology, dealing
with texts written in Bactrian, Khotanese, Tumshuqese, Tocharian, and
Gāndhārī (Niya-Prakrit) from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and
Northwest China, as well as with classical Chinese Buddhist scriptures
and the newly discovered Almosi inscriptions of Tajikistan. With studies
of the Kharoṣṭhī, Brāhmī, Graeco-Bactrian scripts and the “unknown
Kushan script”, the book presents important advances in longstanding
problems of Central Asian philology. The volume will be of interest to
scholars and students working on cultural and linguistic interactions in
Kushan and post-Kushan times.
Bolgov, N. N. (2021) : Северное Причерноморье от античности к средневековью (2-я пол. III – 1-я пол. VII вв.) / Severnoe Prichernomor’e ot antichnosti k srednevekov’ju (2-ja pol. III – 1-ja pol. VII vv.), Belgorod [Le nord de la mer Noire de l’Antiquité au Moyen âge (2e moitié du IIIe s. 1ère moitié du VIIe s.)]
L’auteur cherche à saisir le passage de
l’Antiquité au Moyen âge au nord de la mer Noire marquée par la
disparition du Royaume du Bosphore, l’apparition de nouvelles
populations venues de la steppe et la diffusion du christianisme sous
l’impulsion de l’Empire Byzantin.
In this groundbreaking study, Anton Bierl uses recent approaches in
literary and cultural studies to investigate the chorus of Old Comedy.
After an extensive theoretical introduction that also serves as a
general introduction to the dramatic chorus from the comic vantage
point, a close reading of Aristophanes’s Thesmophoriazusae shows
that ritual is indeed present in both the micro- and macrostructure of
Attic comedy, not as a fossilized remnant of the origins of the genre
but as part of a still existing performative choral culture. The chorus
members do play a role within the dramatic plot, but they simultaneously
refer to their own performance in the here and now and to their
function as participants in a ritual. Bierl’s investigation also
includes an unparalleled treatment of the phallic songs preserved by
Semos.
ARCHAI: Revista de Estudos sobre as Origens do Pensamento Ocidental é uma publicação semestral do Grupo Archai: As Origens do Pensamento Ocidental,
grupo interdisciplinar e interinstitucional que congrega pesquisadores
das áreas de filosofia, história, letras, direito e arqueologia de
diversas instituições universitárias brasileiras.
Under the Athenian democracy, litigants were expected to speak for
themselves, though they could memorize a speech written for them. The
texts of about one hundred judicial speeches of the genos dikanikon (the
forensic genre) have survived, all attributed to Demosthenes or another
of the ten writers of canonical status. These professionals wrote
either for themselves or members of a small elite. Victor Bers argues
that men too poor to afford a professionally written speech frequently
spoke before judicial bodies in procedures crucial to their status,
wealth, or even their lives, and that these amateur performances often
manifested an unmanly yielding to emotions of anger or fear;
professional speech, Bers seeks to demonstrate, was to a large degree
crafted in reaction to amateur stumbling.
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
Posts
Stumble It!
