The Art and Rhetoric of the Homeric Catalogue

Benjamin Sammons, "The Art and Rhetoric of the Homeric Catalogue"
English | ISBN: 0195375688 | 2010 | 248 pages | PDF | 2 MB
In The Art and Rhetoric of the Homeric Catalogue, Benjamin Sammons takes a fresh look at a familiar element of the Homeric epics - the poetic catalogue. This study uncovers the great variety of functions fulfilled by the catalogue as a manner of speech within very different contexts, ranging from celebrated examples such as the poet's famous "Catalogue of Ships," to others less commonly treated under this rubric, such as catalogues within the speech and rhetoric of Homer's characters. Sammons shows that catalogue poetry is no ossified or primitive relic of the old tradition, but a living subgenre of poetry that is used by Homer in a creative and original way. He finds that catalogues may be used by the poet or his characters to reflect - or distort - the themes of the poem at large, to impose an interpretation on events as they unfold, and possibly to allude to competing poetic traditions or even contemporaneous poems. Throughout, the study focuses on how Homer uses his