With Homeric poetry, it is argued that no single definitive text could evolve until the oral traditions in which the epic was grounded became obsolete. In the watershed era of Aristarchus, around 150 BC, the gradual movement from relatively more fluid to more rigid stages of Homeric transmission reached a near-final point of textualization.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Introduction: a brief survey of concepts and aims; Part I. Mimesis and the Making of Identity in Poetic Performance: 1. The Homeric nightingale and the poetics of variation in the art of a troubadour; 2. Mimesis, models of singers, and the meaning of a Homeric epithet; 3. Mimesis in Homer and beyond; 4. Mimesis in lyric: Sappho's Aphrodite and the Changing Woman of the Apache; Part II. Fixed Text in Theory, Shifting Words in Performance: 5. Multiform epic and Aristarchus' quest for the real Homer; 6. Homer as script; 7. Homer as 'scripture'; Epilogue: dead poets and recomposed performers; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.
