The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives

The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives: Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia investigates both the construction of the Homeric simile and the performance of Homeric poetry from neglected comparative perspectives, offering a revealing exploration of what made the epics such powerful examples of verbal artistry. Divided into two parts, the volume first considers similes in five modern-day oral poetries - Rajasthani epic, South Sumatran epic,
Kyrgyz epic, Bosniac epic, and Najdi lyric poems from Saudi Arabia - and studies successful performances by still other verbal artists, such as Egyptian singers of epic, Turkish minstrels, and Chinese storytellers. By applying these findings to the Homeric epics, the second part presents a new take on how the
Homeric poets put together their similes and alters our understanding of how the poets displayed their competence as performers of verbal art and interacted with their poetic peers and predecessors. Engaging intensively with a diverse array of scholarship from outside the field of classical studies, from folkloristics to cognitive linguistics, this truly interdisciplinary volume transforms how we view not only a central feature of Homeric poetry but also the very nature of Homeric
performance.

Jonathan L. Ready is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Indiana University. He is the author of Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and of numerous articles on Homeric epic, as well as the co-editor of the forthcoming Homer in Performance: Rhapsodes, Narrators, and Characters (University of Texas Press, 2018) and the annual Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic
(Brill).