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Sunday, 31 October 2010
What Does It Mean To Say That The Iliad Is An Oral Poem?
 by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi (November 2010) To examine the question of what it means to say that the Iliad is an 'oral' poem, it is first necessary to overview the history of how the Iliad has been viewed by scholars, and to see how the opinion of the Iliad as an 'oral' poem arose. We must then ask what the implications are of this view as regards the reading of the Iliad. more>>> Posted on 10/31/2010 3:21 PM by NER
Comments
1 Nov 2010
 Clark
Without the intention to discourage or disparage, the reality is that classical Hellenic and Roman poetry is musical in its essence through the pattern of long and short syllables like musical notes. In order to provide coherent rules for what the contemporary already knew from childhood, the determination of syllable length or scansion appears to us today rather complex in Greek, somewhat less so in Latin. The passage of thousands of years and the pressures of modernity have not eradicated the music of the Italian language. |