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Laddar... Hearing Homer's song : the brief life and big idea of Milman Parry (urspr publ 2021; utgåvan 2021)av Robert Kanigel
VerksinformationHearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry av Robert Kanigel (2021)
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. A deeply researched biography of Milman Parry, the classics scholar who proved that these poems, like other ancient epics from around the world, came from an oral tradition. They were composed—but not written and the results were handed down through the generations. Such poets and singers were not praised for originality but for their ability to tell these stirring stories in ways that were familiar and always delivered within certain metrical constraints and patterns. This is a fascinating book which will leave you musing about traditions, culture, and what else you may have learned that needs a fresh examination. ( ) Such a great biography. I've never read Homer before, heard of Milman Parry, nor am I a Classicist, yet this book is wonderful. Learned so much. No fears, this is not a dry book on an academic topic wrapped in the veneer of a "big idea". It's difficult to explain why this book is so good because it started a bit boring/confusing, but the elements begin to pile on and it just works: the biography, adventure travel in 1920s Balkans, mysterious death, a big revolutionary idea that has changed the field of literary studies, a brilliant young man and his untimely death who becomes a sort of heroic figure mirroring his subject. And Kanigel is an excellent writer, he has a knack for picking the precise word, it feels carefully done. Richard Poe is the right narrator, the text compliments him to an extent I had not noticed in earlier readings, there is a synergy here. Why should you care about this topic? Well,we tend to have a bias towards written cultures and view oral as something less. This is why Bob Dylan was reviled for winning the Nobel (even though it is technically written) he was merely a bard, a song writer, is that really literature? Another reason is that Parry showed how self-learning, conviction and hard work can cause an academic revolution. He did nothing but learn Ancient Greek, read Homer, and write down a thesis - in his early 20s. Now he is immortal, there is BP (Before Parry) and AP (After Parry) - even if you disagree he can not be avoided, like a literary Darwin who discovered the key to understanding ancient epic literature.
We each think we comprehend Milman Parry’s motivation and achievement, but perhaps only a complete outsider to the field like Robert Kanigel, free of the passionate intensity that has long characterized Homeric studies, could have understood Parry’s discovery so well and explained it with such clarity for the benefit of both scholars and the wider public.
From the acclaimed biographer of Jane Jacobs and Srinivasa Ramanujan comes the first full life and work of arguably the most influential classical scholar of the twentieth century, who overturned long-entrenched notions of ancient epic poetry and enlarged the very idea of literature. In this literary detective story, Robert Kanigel gives us a long overdue portrait of an Oakland druggist's son who became known as the "Darwin of Homeric studies." So thoroughly did Milman Parry change our thinking about the origins of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey that scholars today refer to a "before" Parry and an "after." Kanigel describes the "before," when centuries of readers, all the way up until Parry's trailblazing work in the 1930's, assumed that the Homeric epics were "written" texts, the way we think of most literature; and the "after" that we now live in, where we take it for granted that they are the result of a long and winding oral tradition. Parry made it his life's work to develop and prove this revolutionary theory, and Kanigel brilliantly tells his remarkable story--cut short by Parry's mysterious death by gunshot wound at the age of thirty-three. From UC Berkeley to the Sorbonne to Harvard to Yugoslavia--where he traveled to prove his idea definitively by studying its traditional singers of heroic poetry--we follow Parry on his idiosyncratic journey, observing just how his early notions blossomed into a full-fledged theory. Kanigel gives us an intimate portrait of Parry's marriage to Marian Thanhouser and their struggles as young parents in Paris, and explores the mystery surrounding Parry's tragic death at the Palms Hotel in Los Angeles. Tracing Parry's legacy to the modern day, Kanigel explores how what began as a way to understand the Homeric epics became the new field of "oral theory," which today illuminates everything from Beowulf to jazz improvisation, from the Old Testament to hip-hop. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)880.092Literature Greek and other Classical languages Greek literature Classic literature study and criticismKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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