The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives: Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia investigates both the construction of the Homeric simile and the performance of Homeric poetry from neglected comparative perspectives. The first part considers similes in five modern oral poetries—Rajasthani epic, South Sumatran epic, Kyrgyz epic, Bosniac epic, and Najdi lyric poems from Saudi Arabia—and studies successful performances by still other verbal artists, such as Egyptian singers of epic, Turkish minstrels, and Chinese storytellers. In applying these findings to the Homeric epics, the second part offers a new take on how the Homeric poets put together their similes and alters our understanding of how the poets displayed their competence as performers of verbal art. Engaging intensively with a diverse array of scholarship from outside the field of classics, from folkloristics to cognitive linguistics, this book changes how we view not only a central feature of Homeric poetry but also the very nature of Homeric performance.