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This book provides a groundbreaking reassessment of the prehistory of Homeric epic. It argues that in the Early Iron Age bilingual poets transmitted to the Greeks a set of narrative traditions closely related to the one found at Bronze-Age Hattusa, the Hittite capital. Key drivers for Near Eastern influence on the developing Homeric tradition were the shared practices of supralocal festivals and venerating divinized ancestors, and a shared interest in creating narratives about a legendary past using a few specific storylines: theogonies, genealogies connecting local polities, long-distance travel, destruction of a famous city because it refuses to release captives, and trying to overcome death when confronted with the loss of a dear companion. Professor Bachvarova concludes by providing a fresh explanation of the origins and significance of the Greco-Anatolian legend of Troy, thereby offering a new solution to the long-debated question of the historicity of the Trojan War.

Epic poetry, Greek --- Hittites --- Hittite literature --- History and criticism --- Religion --- Homer. --- Gilgamesh --- Homer --- Epic poetry, Greek - History and criticism --- Hittites - Religion --- Hittite literature - History and criticism --- Homer - Iliad --- History and criticism. --- Religion. --- Gilgamesh. --- Epic of Gilgamesh --- Ghilgameš --- Gilgamesch --- Gilgamesz --- Gilgāmish --- Guilgamesh --- Ishtar and Izdubar --- Ishtar (Assyro-Babylonian epic) --- Izdubar --- Jiljāmish --- Kilkāmish --- Sha naqba imura

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A body of theory has developed about the role and function of memory in creating and maintaining cultural identity. Yet there has been no consideration of the rich Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions of laments for fallen cities in commemorating or resolving communal trauma. This volume offers new insights into the trope of the fallen city in folk-song and a variety of literary genres. These commemorations reveal memories modified by diverse agendas, and contains narrative structures and motifs that show the meaning of memory-making about fallen cities. Opening a new avenue of research into the Mediterranean genre of city lament, this book examines references to, or re-workings of, otherwise lost texts or ways of commemorating fallen cities in the extant texts, and with greater emphasis than usual on the point of view of the victors.

Laments --- Ruins in literature. --- Cities and towns in literature. --- History and criticism --- Complancha --- Lamentations --- Elegiac poetry --- Mourning customs --- History and criticism. --- Ruins in literature --- Cities and towns in literature

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Before they were written down, the poems attributed to Homer were performed orally, usually by rhapsodes (singers/reciters) who might have traveled from city to city or enjoyed a position in a wealthy household. Even after the Iliad and the Odyssey were committed to writing, rhapsodes performed the poems at festivals, often competing against each other. As they recited the epics, the rhapsodes spoke as both the narrator and the characters. These different acts--performing the poem and narrating and speaking in character within it--are seldom studied in tandem. Homer in Performance breaks new ground by bringing together all of the speakers involved in the performance of Homeric poetry: rhapsodes, narrators, and characters.The first part of the book presents a detailed history of the rhapsodic performance of Homeric epic from the Archaic to the Roman Imperial periods and explores how performers might have shaped the poems. The second part investigates the Homeric narrators and characters as speakers and illuminates their interactions. The contributors include scholars versed in epigraphy, the history of art, linguistics, and performance studies, as well as those capable of working with sources from the ancient Near East and from modern Russia. This interdisciplinary approach makes the volume useful to a spectrum of readers, from undergraduates to veteran professors, in disciplines ranging from classical studies to folklore.

E-books --- Epic poetry, Greek - History and criticism - Theory, etc. --- Performing arts - Appreciation - Greece --- Oral interpretation of poetry --- Oral tradition - Greece --- Homer - Criticism, Textual --- Epic poetry, Greek --- Performing arts --- Oral tradition --- Homer --- Oral interpretation of poetry. --- Oral tradition. --- Performanz --- Rezeption. --- Sprechtheater. --- History and criticism --- Theory, etc. --- Appreciation --- Homer. --- Homerus, --- Criticism, Textual. --- Greece.

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Divine Names are a key component in the communication between humans and gods in Antiquity. Their complexity derives not only from the impressive number of onomastic elements available to describe and target specific divine powers, but also from their capacity to be combined within distinctive configurations of gods. The volume collects 36 essays pertaining to many different contexts - Egypt, Anatolia, Levant, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome - which address the multiple functions and wide scope of divine onomastics. Scrutinized in a diachronic and comparative perspective, divine names shed light on how polytheisms and monotheisms work as complex systems of divine and human agents embedded in an historical framework. Names imply knowledge and play a decisive role in rituals; they move between cities and regions, and can be translated; they interact with images and reflect the intrinsic plurality of divine beings. This vivid exploration of divine names pays attention to the balance between tradition and innovation, flexibility and constraints, to the material and conceptual parameters of onomastic practices, to cross-cultural contexts and local idiosyncrasies, in a word to human strategies for shaping the gods through their names.

HISTORY / Medieval. --- Religions. --- monotheisms. --- onomastics. --- polytheisms.