Repetition, Communication, and Meaning in the Ancient World

Deborah Beck is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics, University of Texas at Austin. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1997. Her most recent book is Speech Presentation in Homeric Epic (2012).Contributors are: Justin Arft, Cassandra M. Donnelly, William Duffy, Alexander Forte, Xavier Gheerbrant, Hanna Golab, Françoise Létoublon, Elizabeth Minchin, Thomas J. Nelson, Peter A. O’Connell, Raymond F. Person, Jr., Ruth Scodel, Niall W. Slater, Rodrigo Verano.

''[T]he volume offers interesting and mind-broadening prompts. Homeric scholars will take advantage of the problematization of the category of “repetition” in an oral context, especially in the opening papers, and will be pleased to re-encounter Homer at the end, re-discussed in the light of modern (and unusual) performances thanks to Duffy’s and Minchin’s contributions. Each paper is clearly structured and completed by copious and recent bibliography.'' Ombretta Cesca, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (06.2022)

• PrefaceNotes on ContributorsIntroductionDeborah Beck1 Repetition or Recurrence? A Traditional Use for ἄνδρεσσι μελήσει in Archaic Greek PoetryJustin Arft2 Enumeration and Embodiment in Homeric RepetitionAlexander Forte3 Odysseus’ Scar Once More: Repetition, Tradition and Fiction in the Story of Odysseus’ Hunting in the Mountains of ParnassusFrançoise Létoublon4 Repetition, Sortition, and Abbreviations in the Cypro-Minoan ScriptCassandra M. Donnelly5 Repeating the Unrepeated: Allusions to Homeric Hapax Legomena in Archaic and Classical Greek PoetryThomas J. Nelson6 Repetition and the Creation of “Sappho”Peter A. O’Connell7 Repetition, Disanalogy, and Reflexivity in Hesiod’s Theogony: About the Fate of the Cyclopes, of the Hundred-Handers, and of the Children of IapetusXavier Gheerbrant8 Reperformance, Writing, and the Boundaries of LiteratureRuth Scodel9 Other-Initiated Repetition and Fictive Orality in the Dialogues of PlatoRodrigo Verano10 Repetition, Improvisation, and Parody: Eumolpus Re-takes Troy in Petronius’s Satyrica 83–90Niall W. Slater11 Oral Prayer Patterns in Epigraphic Songs to AsklepiosHanna Golab12 Harmonization in the Pentateuch and Synoptic Gospels: Repetition and Category-Triggering within Scribal MemoryRaymond F. Person, Jr.13 “Godlike” Grappling: Professional Wrestling as a Model for the Shifting of Epithet Significance in Oral PoetryWilliam Duffy14 The Creation of a Storyrealm: The Role of Repetition in Homeric Epic and Alice Oswald’s MemorialElizabeth MinchinIndex