Hesiodic Poetry Research Articles

Generational Reckoning in Hesiod and in the Pentateuch

Previous articleNext article No AccessGenerational Reckoning in Hesiod and in the PentateuchJohn C. PoirierJohn C. PoirierFranklin, Ohio Search for more articles by this author Franklin, OhioPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 62, Number 3July 2003 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/380317 Views: 22Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 2003 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Robert K. Gnuse Greek Connections: Genesis 1–11 and the Poetry of Hesiod, Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible and Culture 47, no.33 (Aug 2017): 131–143.https://doi.org/10.1177/0146107917715586

Aphrodite and the Pandora complex

What have the following in common: Epimetheus, Paris, Anchises, and the suitors of Penelope? The ready answer might be that it must have something to do with women, for it requires no great thought to see that the attractions of femininity proved the undoing of three of them, while for Anchises life was never to be the same again after his encounter with Aphrodite. But suppose we add to our first group such figures as Zeus, Priam, Polynices, and Eumaeus? The fates of all these characters as they, appear at certain points in the poetry of Homer, Hesiod, and others give expression i to a network of interrelated sexual and economic anxieties that seem to underlie a { great deal of what the Archaic poets say about the female sex. In this article I 1 propose to explore a particular part of that network, which I have called the ? ‘Pandora complex’, since it is Hesiod′s version of the Pandora myth which provides the classic statement of the male dilemma over women, poised between the conflicting desires for sexual gratification and domestic stability.1

The World of Hesiod

Toute pensée de l'origine des choses n'est jamais qu'une revérie de leur disposition actuelle, une manière de dégénérescence du réel, une variation sur ce qui est.Paul Valéry in his Preface to Poe'sEureka.The World of Hesiodis familiar as a title, but the world of Hesiod is difficult to locate in a single place. Indeed, it is a number of places. It seems to have its centre in Askra in Boiotia and to extend out in space as far as the high slopes of Mount Helikon. It is a land-locked world and its severe limitations are apparent from what the poet says about the sea and the short sea passage from the mainland at Aulis to Chalkis on Euboia. Even as he offers his advice to the seafarer, he admits that he has no experience in seafaring or ships himself (W&D649). He had only made the trip across to the island of Euboia once to compete as a poet at the funeral games of Amphidamas (W&D646-60). Hesiodic poetry, when it centres on Hesiod's home, seems to crowd into a very small and disagreeable patch of typical Greek countryside. But his Muses enlarge this world. They provide him with a knowledge that he cannot gain himself—both of seafaring and of the vast expanse of the physical world whose origins go beyond the very beginnings of human time. Hesiod's local Muses transport him from the springs of Permessos to the deep currents of Ocean and they disclose to him a universe vaster in its extent and deeper in time than that of the Homeric poems. A sign of these enlarged horizons is the fact that in theTheogonyHesiod begins to sing of the Muses of Helikon (1-4), but then shifts attention to the Muses of Olympos (36-80).

Hesiod's Metanastic Poetics

The received wisdom about Hesiod's poetics is simple: he is no Homer. His poetry is supposedly rough, awkward, unsophisticated, repetitive, disjointed, a second-best versifier's striving after effect. Too often the rhetoric even of those who respect Hesiodic poetry damns it with faint praise. Readers of thePrinceton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics—to take just one easily available reference that students might consult—learn that Hesiod's ‘didactic epics’ were meant forthe peasant of Boeotia rather than the Ionian aristocrat, being concerned with the morality and beliefs of the small farmer toughly confronting a life of ceaseless labor and few rewards. While they cannot be compared to Homer's works in scope or genius, they often display much poetic power.

Introduction

This second volume of essays on Hesiod published under the auspices of Ramus is a supplement to Ramus Essays on Hesiod I. Neither this volume by itself nor for that matter both volumes taken together aspire, in the opinion of the editor, to more than addressing some of the key issues of Hesiodic research from a contemporary perspective. To the extent that all contributors are professors at American universities, the effort is limited in compass. Strictures imposed by a very tight publication schedule and a very trim budget made it quite clear from the beginning that a truly comprehensive and, therefore, international effort could not be initiated by the editor and his collaborators at this time. It is sincerely hoped that our successes will spur others on to better ways of interpreting Hesiodic poetry and archaic Greek poetics in general. Perhaps even our mistakes will be of the kind that will provoke ‘the good Eris’.

The Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry. Richard Hamilton

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry. Richard Hamilton Robert MondiRobert Mondi Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Classical Philology Volume 86, Number 1Jan., 1991 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/367233 Views: 3Total views on this site Copyright 1991 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry

The Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry

Hesiod's Didactic Poetry

In this paper I shall approach Hesiod's poetry from two, rather different, directions; consequently, the paper itself falls into two parts, the argument and conclusions of which are largely independent. In (I) I offer some observations on the vexed question of the organisation of Works and Days; that is, my concern is with the coherence of the poem's form and content. In (II) my attention shifts to the function of this poem and of its companion, Theogony; given the form and content of these two poems, what can we plausibly conjecture about the end or ends to which they were composed? In particular, I shall consider whether, and in what sense, these poems may be regarded as didactic in intent. Much of what I have to say in (I) I say with a measure of confidence; in (II), by contrast, my primary aim is to undermine unwarranted confidence — although I do, even here, reach some positive conclusions.

Poesía oral gnómica en <i>Los trabajos y los días</i>: una muestra de su dicción formular

The author, on grounds of certain aspects of the diction concerning the term ἀνήρ in the poem, detects the heritage of an oral gnomic tradition, independent of the Homeric one. In the great majority of the cases when ἀνήρ appears in the Works the term goes together with an adjective originating a series of «formulae», of which a certain number appears in the rest of the traditional poetry only very occasionally. When they appear at all they do so in aphorisms, or else in passages which are presumably more recent. In the more numerous group of such syntagmata the adjective is a hapax in Hesiod and Homeric poetry; but since the metric-morphologic structure of each one of those formulae tits other types of formulae external to the poem itself, the presence, therefore, of these parallels guarantees the traditional base of the former.

The Green Cabinet and the Pastoral Design: Theocritus, Euripides, and Tibullus

The title of Thomas Rosenmeyer's book, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric, points to a conception of the pastoral as a closed world, set off from the real world outside, despite the author's disclaimer that the title is a misnomer.… the clarity with which the landscape is articulated suggests the limited confines of an interior, (vii) … the freedom of the herdsman is incorruptible; sealed in the bower … it survives and flourishes … (109)In seeking to define the essence of pastoral, Rosenmeyer strips off later accretions and sets the pastoral in sharp contrast to Hesiodic peasant poetry, drama, lyric, romance, and the poetry of Horace and Tibullus. He concentrates on a small number of passages from a limited number of texts to show what he regards as central in Theocritean pastoral: a restricted world of simplicity, freedom, and leisure (otium) that finds its closest corollary in the garden of Epicurus.Yet, even in Rosenmeyer's view, the pastoral ‘pleasance’ is not entirely isolated from the real world. There are, he admits, ‘intimations of a sterner and more hurtful life ostensibly excluded from the arbor’. (23)

The Olympian Faith

The Olympian faith was the religion of the poetry of Hesiod and J. Homer, including the Homeric Hymns, and upon this poetry the thought of all Greeks in the archaic and early classical ages was founded: ‘All men begin their learning with Homer,’ says Xenophanes. Herodotus makes it clear that any Greek of his own day considered Homer and Hesiod canonical:Whence each of the gods arose, whether all always were, what their individual forms are, the Greeks did not know until the day before yesterday, so to speak. For I think that Homer and Hesiod were four hundred years older than me and no more. And they are the ones who constructed divine genealogies for the Greeks, gave the gods their epithets, determined their spheres and functions, and indicated their forms (ii. 53).