CLASSIC 28 Lecture Notes - Telemachus, Ancient Greek
Document Summary
Homeric and hesiodic poetry is spoken word not sung. We shouldn"t think of an audience to homer as being uniform (age, gender, class? etc: multiple audiences that make multiple appeals, ex. Telemachos develops and changes in the course of the poem. Young people (telemachos"s age) have a different response to him. Differences between the audiences in the poem. These poems did not have a fixed text: in this tradition, each time a singer performed, he was also composing a new poem. He composed it while performing using building blocks familiar to him and the audience. Myths: there was a plethora of them that they were both familiar with. Language & style (heroic meter): in ancient greek and latin, verse is organized by quantity (polar opposites = long/short (now heavy/light) which have to do with the way the breath functions in the vocal passages). Homer and hesiod epic poetry (epos = a line of verse in heroic meter).
