Homer the Preclassic

"Homer the Preclassic" considers the development of the Homeric poems - in particular "The Iliad" and "Odyssey" - during the time when they were still part of the oral tradition. Gregory Nagy traces the evolution of rival ´Homers´ and the different versions of Homeric poetry in this pretextual period, reconstructed over a time frame extending back from the sixth century BCE to the Bronze Age. Accurate in their linguistic detail and surprising in their implications, Nagy´s insights conjure the Greeks´ nostalgia for the imagined ´epic space´ of ´Troy´ and for the resonances and distortions this mythic past provided to the various Greek constituencies for whom the Homeric poems were so central and definitive.