[PDF] Homers History eBook

Author : Alberto Manguel
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 275 pages
File Size : 12,87 MB
Release : 2024-10-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0300280793

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A worldwide exploration of the history, purpose, and inescapable influence of the Iliad and the Odyssey that will inspire readers to think anew about Homer’s work No one knows whether Homer was a real person, but there is no doubt that the epic poems assembled under his name are foundations of Western literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey—with their tales of the Trojan War, Achilles, Odysseus and Penelope, the Cyclops, the beautiful Helen of Troy, and the petulant gods—have inspired us for over two and a half millennia and influenced writers from Plato to Virgil, Pope to Joyce, and Dante to Margaret Atwood. In this graceful and sweeping book, Alberto Manguel traces the lineage of Homer’s poems. He examines their original purpose, either as allegory or record of history; surveys the challenges the pagan poems presented to the early Christian world; and looks at their reception after the Reformation through the present day. In this revised and expanded edition, Manguel ignites new ways of thinking about these classic works.

Author : James I. Porter
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 26,20 MB
Release : 2023-03-22
Category : History
ISBN : 0226675904

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The story of our ongoing fascination with Homer, the man and the myth. Homer, the great poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is revered as a cultural icon of antiquity and a figure of lasting influence. But his identity is shrouded in questions about who he was, when he lived, and whether he was an actual person, a myth, or merely a shared idea. Rather than attempting to solve the mystery of this character, James I. Porter explores the sources of Homer’s mystique and their impact since the first recorded mentions of Homer in ancient Greece. Homer: The Very Idea considers Homer not as a man, but as a cultural invention nearly as distinctive and important as the poems attributed to him, following the cultural history of an idea and of the obsession that is reborn every time Homer is imagined. Offering novel readings of texts and objects, the book follows the very idea of Homer from his earliest mentions to his most recent imaginings in literature, criticism, philosophy, visual art, and classical archaeology.

Author : Mark Ribowsky
Publisher : Citadel Press
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 49,33 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9780806524337

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There is no more thrilling moment in the game of baseball than the seconds before the ball flies out of the park, never to be seen again. As Greg Maddux famously said, chicks dig 'em, and men fantasize about hitting them. Now, The Complete History of the Home Run told decade by decade, traces this ultimate macho symbol. Mark Ribowsky looks at how the big hit evolved from a rarity to centerpiece because of Babe Ruth's prowess. Baseball fans will also learn how the home run has been mythologized, written about, and discussed in the media, baseball literature, and in bars all across the county. Featured are such epic swings as: -- Ruth's #60, Roger Maris's #61, Mark McGwire's #70, Barry Bonds's #73, Hank Aaron's K -- Ted Williams's All-Star Game Blast off Rip Sewell; -- Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard Around the World; -- Mickey Mantle's 565-footer in Washington; -- Bill Mazeroski's and Joe Carter's Series-ender; -- Reggie Jackson's Series trio; -- The Tino/Jeter/Brosius trinity.Including commentary on the men who hit these long balls -- Willie Mays, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, and Ted Williams -- the book also brings out the facts and statistics. Readers will find out the truth behind Ruth's Called Shot, Josh Gibson's alleged blast out of Yankee Stadium, who had the best-ever power season, the myth of the lively ball era, the science of the home run, and why yesterday's hits will always be better than today's.

Author : Homer
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 927 pages
File Size : 14,8 MB
Release : 2013-04-29
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1627931457

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The Iliad: Join Achilles at the Gates of Troy as he slays Hector to Avenge the death of Patroclus. Here is a story of love and war, hope and despair, and honor and glory. The recent major motion picture Helen of Troy staring Brad Pitt proves that this epic is as relevant today as it was twenty five hundred years ago when it was first written. So journey back to the Trojan War with Homer and relive the grandest adventure of all times. The Odyssey: Journey with Ulysses as he battles to bring his victorious, but decimated, troops home from the Trojan War, dogged by the wrath of the god Poseidon at every turn. Having been away for twenty years, little does he know what awaits him when he finally makes his way home. These two books are some of the most import books in the literary cannon, having influenced virtually every adventure tale ever told. And yet they are still accessible and immediate and now you can have both in one binding.

Author : Edith Hall
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 14,56 MB
Release : 2008-01-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0857718304

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Whether they focus on the bewitching song of the Sirens, his cunning escape from the cave of the terrifying one-eyed Cyclops, or the vengeful slaying of the suitors of his beautiful wife Penelope, the stirring adventures of Ulysses/Odysseus are amongst the most durable in human culture. The picaresque return of the wandering pirate-king is one of the most popular texts of all time, crossing East-West divides and inspiring poets and film-makers worldwide. But why, over three thousand years, has the Odyssey's appeal proved so remarkably resilient and long-lasting? In her much-praised book Edith Hall explains the enduring fascination of Homer's epic in terms of its extraordinary susceptibility to adaptation. Not only has the story reflected a myriad of different agendas, but - from the tragedies of classical Athens to modern detective fiction, film, travelogue and opera - it has seemed perhaps uniquely fertile in generating new artistic forms. Cultural texts as diverse as Joyce's Ulysses, Suzanne Vega's Calypso, Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou?, Daniel Vigne's Le Retour de Martin Guerre and Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain all show that Odysseus is truly a versatile hero. His travels across the wine-dark Aegean are journeys not just into the mind of one of the most brilliantly creative of all the ancient Greek writers. They are as much a voyage beyond the boundaries of a narrative which can plausibly lay claim to being the quintessential global phenomenon.

Author : Wolfgang Geisthövel
Publisher : Literary Travellers
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 35,83 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781905791392

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Readers of The Odyssey who enjoy traveling often turn their attention to the places that are featured in the hero's wanderings and his son's journey in search of his absent father. Yet this book is not an attempt to locate the places visited by Homer's hero in the real world; instead, it is an attempt to follow the wanderings of Odysseus, which are both literary and almost certainly contain references to real places. Beginning with these places, Wolfgang Geisthovel traces his way back to the poetry through a journey in which personal perception and reading, topography and imagination, and authenticity and fiction all mingle.

Author : Eric H. Cline
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 153 pages
File Size : 36,61 MB
Release : 2013-05-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0199760276

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Using a combination of archaeological data, textual analysis, and ancient documents, this Very Short Introduction to the Trojan War investigates whether or not the war actually took place, whether archaeologists have correctly identified and been excavating the ancient site of Troy, and what has been found there.

Author : Felice Vinci
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 28,81 MB
Release : 2005-12-20
Category : History
ISBN : 1594776458

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Compelling evidence that the events of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey took place in the Baltic and not the Mediterranean • Reveals how a climate change forced the migration of a people and their myth to ancient Greece • Identifies the true geographic sites of Troy and Ithaca in the Baltic Sea and Calypso's Isle in the North Atlantic Ocean For years scholars have debated the incongruities in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, given that his descriptions are at odds with the geography of the areas he purportedly describes. Inspired by Plutarch's remark that Calypso's Isle was only five days sailing from Britain, Felice Vinci convincingly argues that Homer's epic tales originated not in the Mediterranean, but in the northern Baltic Sea. Using meticulous geographical analysis, Vinci shows that many Homeric places, such as Troy and Ithaca, can still be identified in the geographic landscape of the Baltic. He explains how the dense, foggy weather described by Ulysses befits northern not Mediterranean climes, and how battles lasting through the night would easily have been possible in the long days of the Baltic summer. Vinci's meteorological analysis reveals how a decline of the "climatic optimum" caused the blond seafarers to migrate south to warmer climates, where they rebuilt their original world in the Mediterranean. Through many generations the memory of the heroic age and the feats performed by their ancestors in their lost homeland was preserved and handed down to the following ages, only later to be codified by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Felice Vinci offers a key to open many doors that allow us to consider the age-old question of the Indo-European diaspora and the origin of the Greek civilization from a new perspective.

Author : Adam Nicolson
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 19,83 MB
Release : 2014-11-18
Category : History
ISBN : 1627791809

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"Adam Nicolson writes popular books as popular books used to be, a breeze rather than a scholarly sweat, but humanely erudite, elegantly written, passionately felt...and his excitement is contagious."—James Wood, The New Yorker Adam Nicolson sees the Iliad and the Odyssey as the foundation myths of Greek—and our—consciousness, collapsing the passage of 4,000 years and making the distant past of the Mediterranean world as immediate to us as the events of our own time. Why Homer Matters is a magical journey of discovery across wide stretches of the past, sewn together by the poems themselves and their metaphors of life and trouble. Homer's poems occupy, as Adam Nicolson writes "a third space" in the way we relate to the past: not as memory, which lasts no more than three generations, nor as the objective accounts of history, but as epic, invented after memory but before history, poetry which aims "to bind the wounds that time inflicts." The Homeric poems are among the oldest stories we have, drawing on deep roots in the Eurasian steppes beyond the Black Sea, but emerging at a time around 2000 B.C. when the people who would become the Greeks came south and both clashed and fused with the more sophisticated inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean. The poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.