Browsing CHS Classical Inquiries by Title
Now showing items 183-202 of 279
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A placeholder for the love story of Phaedra and Hippolytus: What’s love got to do with it?
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-06-21)When Phaedra sees Hippolytus for the very first time, she is already falling in love with him. That is what Pausanias seems to be saying as he retells the myth. The ancient Greek word that he uses in this context is ... -
A placeholder for the White Goddess
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-05-25)The Greek name for the mythological figure whom we recognize as the White Goddess was Leukotheā—a name that actually means ‘white goddess’. In the ancient myths that tell about this figure, however, she was not always a ... -
A plane tree in Nafplio: decorating a reader for travel-study in Greece, March 2018
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-03-22) -
Poetics of Repetition in Homer
(Harvard Univeristy, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2005)Repetition in Homeric poetry is a matter of performance, not only composition. I argue that this observation applies to the Homeric phenomenon of “repeated utterances.” This argument is part of a larger project, which ... -
Poetry Incarnate: Puccini’s Mimì as metonymy and metaphor combined
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-11-09)This essay is linked with a lengthy book I published in 2015, Masterpieces of Metonymy. There I argued that metonymy and metaphor, as they are known in verbal art, are analogous respectively to horizontal and vertical ... -
A preview of Mages and Ionians revisited
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-12-21) -
Previewing a concise inventory of Greek etymologies, Part 1: Introduction by Gregory Nagy 2016.01.15 to the shape of things to come
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2016-01-15) -
Previewing an essay on the shaping of the Lyric Canon in Athens
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-12-06) -
Prospects of an Odyssean homecoming for Percy Jackson after his sojourn in Lotus Hotel: 75 minutes of intergenerational conversations with Rick Riordan
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-10-16)The minutes that I have written up for this post are a record of 75 real minutes of conversations during “Hour 10” of the Harvard College course “The Ancient Greek Hero,” which took place “live” on October 13, 2020. A ... -
A pseudo-Homer gets exposed by Homer
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2015-06-24) -
A question of “reception”: how could Homer ever outlive his own moments of performance?
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2021-08-30)In the cover illustration for this essay, a painter is picturing Homer at a moment of performance. Or, I could even say that we see Homer here in—not just at—a moment of performance. Homer sings, accompanying himself on ... -
Questions While Viewing Greek Myths and Rituals Through the Lens of Pausanias, I: Did Athena, Goddess of Athens, Belong Only to the Athenians?
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-04-17)In conversations about the ancient world, my sorely-missed friend Emily Vermeule was fond of asking this rhetorical question: in Mycenaean times, was Athena a goddess who was worshipped only in Athens? And there can be ... -
Questions While Viewing Greek Myths and Rituals Through the Lens of Pausanias, II: In Mycenaean Times, Was Athena a Goddess Who Was Worshipped Only in Athens?
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-04-24)In classical Athenian visual art, we find representations of the goddess Athena in the act of conveying the hero Hēraklēs to Olympus in her chariot, as we see in the illustration that I have chosen as the cover for this ... -
Questions While Viewing Greek Myths and Rituals Through the Lens of Pausanias, III: Is ‘Athena’ the Name of a Person or of a Place?
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-05-01)In asking myself whether the Greek proper noun Athḗnē is the name of a person, that is, the goddess known to us as Athena, or the name of a place, that is, the city known to us as Athens, I venture into a way of thinking ... -
Questions While Viewing Greek Myths and Rituals Through the Lens of Pausanias, IV: Is Athena, Viewed Theologically, a Person?
(2020-05-08)In the previous posting, Classical Inquiries 2020.05.01, I asked this question: is “Athena” the name of a person or of a place? And my answer was: “Athena” is the name of a place that we know as Athens. I backed up that ... -
A re-invocation of the Muse for the Homeric Iliad
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-08-16)Working on A sampling of comments on the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, I have made revisions, concentrating on the need to fill some gaps in my analysis of Homeric poetry. Here I focus on a set of revisions centering on the ... -
A reader for travel-study in Greece
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018-03-07)The essays in this reader are designed to supplement visits by travelstudy groups to sites and museums in Greece. Each essay focuses on things to seeor at least to note if they cannot be seenat sites to be visited. In ... -
Revisiting Plato’s Rhapsody: A contribution to a colloquium about Poetic (Mis)quotations in Plato
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2020-06-26)The text of this essay, as posted here in Classical Inquiries 2020.06.26, is a pre-edited version of my contribution to an online colloquium, Poetic (Mis)quotations in Plato, the collected essays for which will reside in ... -
Revisiting the question of etymology and essence
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2016-06-02) -
A Roll of the Dice for Ajax
(Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2015-03-13)