Out of Line: Homeric Composition Beyond the HexameterRowman & Littlefield, 1997 - 264 pages Building upon the groundbreaking work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, Out of Line presents a new theory of Homeric composition, focusing upon patterns that extend beyond the boundary of the line and the clause. Matthew Clark takes enjambment as a starting point, analyzing the techniques used by the poet to complete a line that begins with a runover. Clark proceeds to propose two levels of analysis, a "deep-structure" level, which describes the associations of words and ideas before they take metrical form, and a "surface-structure" level, which describes the words as they are employed on any particular occasion. Out of Line combines formulaic and metrical analysis, expanding the study of Homeric meter both in practice, by taking into account larger compositional structures such as entire scenes, and in theory, by using the results to test models of formulaic composition. This book is important for students and scholars of Homer, epic, and oral literature. |
Contents
Definitions | 19 |
II Embedded Runovers | 28 |
III Orphan Runovers | 33 |
IV Free and Pendant Runovers | 38 |
V Typology and Runovers | 40 |
VI Enjambment and Statistics | 48 |
Modifications | 51 |
II Variable Links in a Chain of Formulas | 60 |
V Particle Systems in Bucolic Anticipations | 128 |
VI Other Anticipations | 142 |
VII Skewed Clauses | 145 |
Larger Constructions | 155 |
II Runovers and Anticipations as Hooks | 165 |
III Composition with Small Formula Chains | 176 |
IV The Composition of Larger Passages | 185 |
Repetition | 209 |
III A Formulaic Construction for Finding Someone | 67 |
Free Runovers | 77 |
II Semantic Motivation | 84 |
III MetricalGrammatical Schemes | 90 |
Anticipations | 105 |
II Embedded Bucolic Anticipations | 113 |
III Pendant Bucolic Anticipations | 118 |
IV Orphan Bucolic Anticipations | 124 |
II Repetition and Text | 226 |
Problems of Translation | 235 |
Bibliography | 245 |
251 | |
259 | |
261 | |
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Popular passages
Page 3 - Oral versemaking by its speed must be chiefly carried on in an adding style. The Singer has not time for the nice balances and contrasts of unhurried thought: he must order his words in such a way that they leave him much freedom to end the sentence or draw it out as the story and the needs of the verse demand.
Page 11 - ... creative" processes of language. There is, in short, no longer a technical barrier to the full-scale study of generative grammars. Returning to the main theme, by a generative grammar I mean simply a system of rules that in some explicit and welldefined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences.