Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

How Homeric is Hysteron Proteron?

How Homeric is Hysteron Proteron? HOW HOMERIC IS HYSTERON PROTERON ? by ELIZABETH MINCHIN It is now eighty years—we go back to a time which precedes the work of Milman Parry—since Samuel Bassett’s article on hysteron proteron in Homer brought to readers’ notice a “remarkable” device, an idiosyncracy of the poet’s style. 1 ) The term, generally speaking, refers to the poet’s preference for spelling out within his song a twofold instruction, proposal, or question and in a subsequent pas- sage reversing the original order of presentation. Bassett examines the occurrence of hysteron proteron in one particular context, which he identiŽ ed in the spoken discourse of both the Iliad and the Odyssey . On the basis of his observations of response patterns in Homer, Bassett had concluded that when more than two questions are asked within the same speaking turn in the Homeric text, there are three possible arrangements of answers: the order of questions may be retained, or varied, or reversed. 2 ) The Ž rst arrangement, according to Bassett, is the ‘most natural’. 3 ) He cites as an example the replies which Mentes-Athene makes to Telemachos’ questioning at Od. 1.180-194. At 1.170-177, Telemachos has asked the following ques- tions: http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Mnemosyne Brill

How Homeric is Hysteron Proteron?

Mnemosyne , Volume 54 (6): 635 – Jan 1, 2001

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/how-homeric-is-hysteron-proteron-nFIhbfZ0UE

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2001 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0026-7074
eISSN
1568-525X
DOI
10.1163/15685250152952112
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

HOW HOMERIC IS HYSTERON PROTERON ? by ELIZABETH MINCHIN It is now eighty years—we go back to a time which precedes the work of Milman Parry—since Samuel Bassett’s article on hysteron proteron in Homer brought to readers’ notice a “remarkable” device, an idiosyncracy of the poet’s style. 1 ) The term, generally speaking, refers to the poet’s preference for spelling out within his song a twofold instruction, proposal, or question and in a subsequent pas- sage reversing the original order of presentation. Bassett examines the occurrence of hysteron proteron in one particular context, which he identiŽ ed in the spoken discourse of both the Iliad and the Odyssey . On the basis of his observations of response patterns in Homer, Bassett had concluded that when more than two questions are asked within the same speaking turn in the Homeric text, there are three possible arrangements of answers: the order of questions may be retained, or varied, or reversed. 2 ) The Ž rst arrangement, according to Bassett, is the ‘most natural’. 3 ) He cites as an example the replies which Mentes-Athene makes to Telemachos’ questioning at Od. 1.180-194. At 1.170-177, Telemachos has asked the following ques- tions:

Journal

MnemosyneBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2001

There are no references for this article.