Hearing Homer's song : the brief life and big idea of Milman Parry /

Hearing Homer's song : the brief life and big idea of Milman Parry /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Kanigel, Robert, author.
Edition:First edition.
Imprint:New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.
©2021
Description:320 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Language:English
Subject:
Parry, Milman.
Parry, Milman
Classicists -- United States -- 20th century -- Biography.
Classicists
United States
Biographies
Biographies.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12691175
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Varying Form of Title:Brief life and big idea of Milman Parry
ISBN:9780525520948
0525520945
9780525520955
Notes:"This is a Borzoi book" -- title page verso.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-306) and index.
Summary:In the early 1930s, Milman Parry introduced the revolutionary hypothesis that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not "written" as we understand it, but derived from an oral tradition going back centuries; this idea's effects are still felt in contemporary scholarship, but Parry himself has mostly disappeared from view. Now, Robert Kanigel gives us a full and vivid account of his life, explores the mystery surrounding Parry's death at 33, and describes how, in the ensuing years, what began as a way to understand the Homeric epics became the new field of "oral theory," which continues to be applied to everything from Beowulf to jazz improvisation, from the Old Testament to the latest hip-hop.

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