Dr Adrian Kelly: List of publications

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From the Odyssey to the Iliad, and round (and round) again

November 2024
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Chapter
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Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
As scholars look increasingly for the traces of intertextuality and allusion in early Greek poetry, Homer remains the prime focus of interest, and the relationship between the Iliad and Odyssey especially so. This chapter suggests that, though direct allusion between texts should not be ruled out a priori, an intertextual dynamic which stems from the traditionality of the texts is a more reliable and rewarding first interpretative step. The discussion reviews two examples which have served as important planks in the case that the Odyssey explicitly refers to the Iliad, and finds wanting the allusive arguments normally used to make that case, before suggesting a more methodologically and historically sound form of interaction. Interpretation, meaning, and appreciation all remain possible, and are indeed much richer in their appreciation of the poetry.
traditional referentiality, PST (performance/song/text), orality, Homer, neoanalysis, discrepancy, allusion, Odyssey, Iliad, inconsistency, sources, intertextuality

Introduction

November 2024
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Chapter
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Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
The first section of this introduction sets the scene for the volume as a whole by briefly considering the history of intertextuality within modern classical scholarship, both Latin and Greek, and then highlighting the special methodological and historical challenges that attend on comparative approaches to early Greek literature. As scholars increasingly agree on the need to read early Greek literature in a comparative way, it is argued, this only makes more urgent the question of how best to do so. The second section of the introduction highlights some of the core methodological, historical, and literary preoccupations of this book by exploring in chronological order two contrastive and complementary case studies from early elegy, one from Tyrtaeus and one from Simonides. Rather than providing a set of definitive answers about how these texts relate to epic tradition and/or particular epics, this section aims to give a sense of the sort of questions at stake in the following chapters. The introduction then concludes by summarising each of those chapters and highlighting interconnections between them.
traditional referentiality, allusion, Latin, Simonides, orality, Greek, textuality, intertextuality, Tyrtaeus

The wisdom of Archilochus: didactic intertexts in early Greek poetry

November 2024
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Chapter
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Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
This chapter investigates Archilochus’ relationship to the tradition of wisdom literature, using the poet as a case study for how we can think about inter-generic and intertextual relationships so early in the Greek literary tradition. Having established that Archilochus is familiar with (and expects his audience also to know) the conventions of didactic moralising, the chapter discusses the case for a stronger proposition: that his poetry demonstrates a specific relationship with the poems of Hesiod. The chapter examines some fragments which demonstrate the best case for an intertextual relationship (frr. 196a, 195, 177) and discusses how reading these through a Hesiodic lens enhances our understanding of what the poems aim to do and how they fit into Archilochus’ broader rhetorical strategy.
Neoboule, wisdom literature, misogyny, Pandora, didactic poetry, fable, Hesiod, iambus, Archilochus

Talk and text: the pre-Alexandrian footnote from Homer to Theodectes

September 2024
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Chapter
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Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece,
How much continuity was there in the allusive practices of the ancient world? I explore this question here by considering the early Greek precedent for the so-called ‘Alexandrian footnote’, a device often regarded as one of the most learned and bookish in a Roman poet’s allusive arsenal. Ever since Stephen Hinds opened his foundational Allusion and Intertext with this device, it has been considered the preserve of Hellenistic and Roman scholar-poets. In this chapter, however, I argue that we should back-date the phenomenon all the way to the archaic age. By considering a range of illustrative examples from epic (Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiod), lyric (Sappho, Pindar, Simonides) and tragedy (Sophocles, Euripides, Theodectes), I demonstrate that the ‘Alexandrian footnote’ has a long history before Alexandria.
Homer, lyric, tragedy, intertextuality, Alexandrian footnote, epic, allusion, literary history

Introduction

October 2023
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Chapter
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Text and Intertext in Archaic and Classical Greece

Text and Intertext in Archaic and Classical Greece

October 2023
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Book

Cyprias and the Cypria

February 2023
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Chapter
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Cyprus in Texts from Graeco-Roman Antiquity
SBTMR

Homer and Hipponax

January 2023
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Chapter
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Framing Hipponax
SBTMR

Epic and lyric

May 2022
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Chapter
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A Companion to Greek Lyric
There are several points of contact between epic and lyric poetry of the archaic period, although all of them, in their capacity to articulate the differences between these modes of composition, require some kind of nuance and offer interesting exceptions. A niggling impression of inconsistency remains, especially given that Tyrtaeus uses the same theme in a hortatory elegy: the poet here makes it clear that the death of an old man in battle is a shameful thing, following on from his call to the young specifically not to abandon their elders, whilst it is both laudable and beautiful for a youth to die there. Connection between summer and wine drinking is traditional in early poetry, and Hesiod's consumption is in keeping with his poem's moderation and restraint, while the Alcaean refraction isolates and puts the drinking first, and in exuberant terms somewhat removed from the well-instructed farmer seasonally resting from his toils.
SBTMR

Introduction

August 2021
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Journal article
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Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies

Chapter 4 - Sappho and epic

April 2021
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Chapter
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The Cambridge Companion to Sappho
Chapter 4 of The Cambridge Companion to Sappho surveys Sappho’s relationship with archaic epic poetry, in particular the Iliad and Odyssey, and examines the extent to which similarities of language and theme should be regarded as deliberate borrowings as opposed to the employment of motifs and ideas common to the archaic Greek poetic tradition.
allusion, Sappho, Odyssey, ancient Greece, epic, Iliad, Homer, lovewar, poetry

Chapter 16 - Sexing and gendering the succession myth in Hesiod and the Ancient Near East

March 2021
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Chapter
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Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology
This chapter considers the case of the Song of Emergence that has proved central to several contributions collected here, but approaches the comparison as an opportunity to appreciate the distinctive differences reflected in the various relevant sources. This chapter emphasises the role of female wife–mother figures as destabilising elements in Hesiod’s Theogony, in contrast to the more limited roles of female characters particularly in the Song of Emergence, and locates that gendering theme within the wider context of early Greek mythology. This comparison allows us to see the individual element working within its own context, to determine what is distinctive about each tradition and so, finally, to understand all of them better. Genealogy, at least in the way most Classicists would like to practise it, is neither possible nor profitable. But the comparison remains, and its analogy can tell us a lot.
succession myth, Song of Emergence , Theogony of Dunnu, sex, Hesiod, Homeric hymns, gender, Aphrodite, Homer, Atrahasīs

Gods and Mortals in early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology

March 2021
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Book

Etana in Greece

January 2021
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Chapter
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Divine Narratives in Early Greece and the Ancient Near East

The Cambridge Companion to Sappho

January 2021
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Book

With, or without, Homer: hearing the background in Sappho

April 2020
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Chapter
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More than Homer Knew - Studies on Homer and His Ancient Commentators
Nature may well abhor a vacuum, but Classicists could definitely give her a run for her money, especially those of us who deal with the literary history of the Ar-chaic period. Scholars in this area are used to patchy evidence, unclear lines of influence and development, and a persistent darkness surrounding the genesis, earliest transmission and reception of our texts. Readers unfortunate enough to be familiar with my previous work will recall a certain kind of intellectual fallacy to which, I have suggested, Classicists are especially susceptible — WYSIATI, or what you see is all there is.2 That is, scholars are prone to filling the gaps in our evidence by pretending that there aren’t any, as though the extant literature from this period amounts to all that we need to know, or all that is worth knowing. In practical terms, this leads them to construct the literary history of the Archaic period around the central pillars of the Homeric poems, and then to link those texts with every other, in a story of development and literary influence familiar from later stages of antiquity. In sum, we are told that we should use the same strategies of the Augustan poets in Rome as the model to understand the visible beginnings of Greek literature.3

Medea

January 2020
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Chapter
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The Brill Companion to Euripides

Gendrificando o mito de sucessão em Hesíodo e no Antigo Oriente Próximo

December 2019
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Journal article
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Classica - Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos
<jats:p>Este artigo reexamina um dos casos mais famosos de interação, o chamado Mito de Sucessão encontrado nas tradições grega arcaica, acadiana e hurro-hitita. Ele sugere que a versão dessa narrativa na Teogonia de Hesíodo, em lugar de indicar um modelo simplista de derivação direta, toca em um processo de interação mais rico e complexo, e que, portanto, esse nexo de textos do Oriente Próximo – incluindo a Canção de Emergência hitita (que costumava ser chamada Canção de Kumarbi), mas acrescentando a Teogonia de Dunnu e o Enuma Elish acadianos e uma variedade de narrativas posteriores da tradição greco-fenícia – pode indicar algo de fundamental sobre cada cultura, especificamente o modo pelo qual os gregos da época arcaica percebiam o gênero como um elemento essencial na sua construção dessas narrativas: ou seja, a figura da esposa-mãe, que nas tradições próximo-orientais pode assumir, e de fato assume, uma variedade de papéis, é consistentemente reduzida a uma função desestabilizadora, minando e subvertendo o domínio da divindade marido-pai. O estudo desses textos serve como uma ilustração clara do modo pelo qual a analogia transcultural é mais recompensadora do que uma genealogia buscada e definida de maneira estrita, que já foi a moda dominante do estudo comparativo no campo dos Estudos Clássicos.</jats:p>

Homer's Rivals? Internal Narrators in the Iliad

August 2018
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Chapter
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Homer in Performance: Rhapsodes, Narrators, and Characters
Homer’s authority is everywhere in the ancient world; from biography to history, art and literature, yet the two poems which have come down to us under his name tell us nothing about their author. Unlike their near contemporary Hesiod, who is very forthcoming about biographical details and family quarrels, neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey – though they contain plenty of first person pronouns referring to the ‘poet’ – give us anything like that kind of detail.1 Presumably this helped to make his later biographical tradition so rich and contested, but it poses an interesting problem for any interpreter of Homeric poetry: why, in a world in which who you are matters as much as what you say, is this absent figure granted so much authority? What is it about his poetry that makes Homer such a uniquely trusted figure in the history of ancient narrative? Though modern scholars have approached this question from a number of angles, the particular approach in this chapter has not, to my knowledge, been explored before, or at least not in this way. And that is perhaps rather fitting for the strategy with which we are concerned.

Conflict in Iliad Book 23: managing oneself and others

January 2017
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Chapter
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Conflict and Consensus in early Greek hexameter poetry

Aias in Athens: the worlds of the play and the audience

January 2016
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Journal article
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Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica: atti di convegni
Athenian tragic poets were careful to separate the ‘heroic’ world from the world of their ffth-century audience, and they did so by deploying the twin dynamic of ‘distance and diference’. This dynamic encoded cultural lessons and allowed the audience to sympathise with the dilemmas facing the characters on stage, and thus to evaluate and understand the way they went about dealing with those dilemmas. The Aias of Sophocles is used to make the point, demonstrating that the playwright attempted to construct a unity from his character’s rather mixed history, in doing so to appeal to his audience’s sense of their own place in the world.

Homero na poetas líricos: recepção e transmissão

January 2016
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Journal article
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Classica

The state of Stesichorean studies

June 2015
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Chapter
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Stesichorus in Context
43 History, Heritage and Archaeology, 47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4303 Historical Studies, 4705 Literary Studies

Homer: Iliad Book XXII

April 2015
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Journal article
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CLASSICAL REVIEW

(A.) Vergados The Homeric Hymn to Hermes : Introduction, Text and Commentary (Texte und Kommentare 41). Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013. Pp. xiii + 717. £129.95. 9783110259698.

January 2015
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Journal article
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies
43 History, Heritage and Archaeology, 47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4303 Historical Studies, 4705 Literary Studies

Ilias Parva

January 2015
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Chapter
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The Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception

Stesichorus in Context

January 2015
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Book

Stesichorus' Homer

January 2015
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Chapter
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Stesichorus in Context

The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey, written by Bakker, E. J.

January 2015
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Journal article
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Mnemosyne
47 Language, Communication and Culture, 50 Philosophy and Religious Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology

Apollonios and the end of the Aeneid

January 2014
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Journal article
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Classical Quarterly

G.D. Bird Multitextuality in the Homeric Iliad: The Witness of the Ptolemaic Papyri (Hellenic Studies 43). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Pp. viii + 119. $19.95. 009780674053236.

January 2014
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Journal article
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies
47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4705 Literary Studies

Hellenistic Arming in the Batrakhomyomakhia

January 2014
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Journal article
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Classical Quarterly

Homeric Battle Narrative and the Ancient Near East

January 2014
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Chapter
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Defining Greek Narrative

N. Richardson Three Homeric Hymns: to Apollo, Hermes, and Aphrodite, Hymns 3, 4, and 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xiii + 272; maps. £55.99 (hbk); £19.99 (pbk). 9780521451581 (hbk); 9780521457733 (pbk).

January 2013
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Journal article
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies
47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology

Oedipus at Colonus

January 2013
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Chapter
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The Blackwell Encyclopedia to Greek Tragedy

Proemic convention and character construction in early Greek epic

January 2013
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Journal article
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Harvard Studies in Classical Philology

Tradição na épica grega antiga

January 2013
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Journal article
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Letras Clássicas

‘Listening to many voices: Greek Tragedy as Popular Art’

January 2013
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Chapter
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The Author’s Voice in Classical and Late Antiquity

The Mourning of Thetis: ‘Allusion’ and the Future in the Iliad

April 2012
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Chapter
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Homeric Contexts

THE AUDIENCE EXPECTS: PENELOPE AND ODYSSEUS

January 2012
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Chapter
The relationship between composition and performance lies at the heart of Homeric poetics, for scholars have long understood that the moment of performance is crucial for the generation, indeed realisation, of early Greek oral traditional epic. This paper proposes to analyse the recognition sequence(s) between Odysseus and Penelope in Odyssey 23 from this perspective, arguing that the episode can only fully be understood by recapturing the narratives performative strategies: that is, those strategies designed to engage the attention of an audience specifically at the moment of performance. I propose to elucidate this dynamism, for want of a better term, by setting out the structural grammar' underlying the construction of the scene, and then showing how the poet manipulates his audiences familiarity with that grammar in order to create uncertainty, excitement and meaning, to direct, misdirect and control their response, and on the smallest scales of narrative. When we appreciate the presence and pervasiveness of this interaction, not only can we feel the poetry's immediacy and vividness in a manner like that enjoyed by an Archaic Greek audience, but we can also apply a more nuanced understanding of Homeric technique to textual and scholarly zetemata, as with the famous (and so-called) 'interruption to the recognition sequence (111-163) in the current example. Aside from these two advantages, the demonstration of such a specifically 'orally-derived' strategy can only help further to illustrate the origin of Homer's aesthetic within a tradition of recomposition in performance, and so the interdependence of the conference's twin themes.

The mourning of Thetis: ‘allusion’ and the future in the Iliad

January 2012
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Chapter
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Homeric Contexts: Neoanalysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry

‘The audience expects: Odysseus and Penelope’

January 2012
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Chapter
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Orality, Literacy, and Performance in the Ancient World

(Y.) Rinon Homer and the Dual Model of the Tragic. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Pp. viii + 220. £46.95. 9780472116638.

November 2010
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Journal article
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies
43 History, Heritage and Archaeology, 47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4303 Historical Studies, 4705 Literary Studies

(A.) Dalby: Rediscovering Homer: Inside the Origins of the Epic. Pp. xxiv + 266, maps. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2007. Paper, £9.99, US$15.95. ISBN: 978-0-393-33019-9.

October 2010
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Journal article
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The Classical Review
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology

Hypertexting with Homer: Tlepolemos and Sarpedon on Herakles (Iliad 5.628–98)’

January 2010
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Journal article
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Trends in Classics

Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus

July 2009
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Book
In this book, Adrian Kelly provides an introduction and guide to Sophocles&' final play, focusing on questions of structure, thematics, content and context.
Drama

Parodic inconsistency: some problems in the Batrakhomyomakhia

January 2009
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Journal article
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Journal of Hellenic Studies

(A.) Luther (ed.) Geschichte und Fiktion in der homerischen Odyssee. (Zetemata 125.) Pp. 248. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2006. Paper, €58. ISBN: 978-3-406-54192-6.

January 2008
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Journal article
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The Classical Review
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology

The Babylonian Captivity of Homer: the case of the Dios Apate

January 2008
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Journal article
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Rheinisches Museum fuer Philologie

The ending of Iliad 7: A response

January 2008
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Journal article
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PHILOLOGUS

The Ending of Iliad 7: a response

January 2008
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Journal article
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Philologus: Zeitschrift fuer antike Literatur und ihre Rezeption

‘Performance and rivalry: Homer, Odysseus and Hesiod’

January 2008
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Chapter
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Performance, reception, iconography
Homer, Hesiod, Greek epic poetry

ΑΨΟΡΡΟΟΥ ΩΚΕΑΝΟΙΟ – A Babylonian Reminiscence?

May 2007
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Journal article
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The Classical Quarterly

(R.J.) Rabel (ed.) Approaches to Homer, Ancient and Modern. Pp. xviii + 201. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2005. Cased. ISBN: 978-1-905125-04-3.

April 2007
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Journal article
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The Classical Review
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology

A Referential Commentary and Lexicon to Homer, Iliad VIII

February 2007
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Book
This book aims to provide the reader of Homer with the traditional knowledge and fluency in Homeric poetry which an original ancient audience would have brought to a performance of this type of narrative.
Literary Criticism

How to End an Orally-Derived Epic Poem

January 2007
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Journal article
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Transactions of the American Philological Association

Stesikhoros and Helen

January 2007
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Journal article
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Museum Helveticum: Schweizerische Zeitschrift fuer klassische Altertumswissenschaft
The famous story of Stesikhoros’ encounter with Helen can be explained as a biographical derivation from the structure itself of a single ‘hymnodic’ poem composed in honour of that figure. Known in antiquity as either the <em>Helen</em> or the <em>Palinode</em>, this poem employed a <em>persona</em> narrative (probably) in its first section, and it did so principally in order to establish Stesikhoros’ authority against the background of Homeric and Hesiodic treatments. This episode then gave rise to stories both about the author (his blindness) and his text (two compositions, and then even two <em>Palinodes</em>). After considering the evidence for such encounters in Archaic and Classical Greek poetry and how they might be reconciled with the fragments and testimonia, the article discusses the problems with those sources which multiply the <em>Helen / Palinode</em>, and closes with a brief reconstruction of the poem according to the current hypothesis.

(M.) Kitts Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society. Oath-making Rituals and Narratives in the Iliad. Pp. xii + 244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Cased, £45, US$75. ISBN: 0-521-85529-2.

October 2006
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Journal article
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The Classical Review
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology

Homer and History: Iliad 9.381-4

August 2006
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Journal article
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Mnemosyne

Neoanalysis and the "Nestorbedrängnis" : a test case

January 2006
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Journal article
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Hermes: Zeitschrift fuer klassische Philologie

Aias in Athens

Conference paper

Laughter in the Library: a Colloquium for Penny Bulloch

Conference paper

Poetry and Performance: a conference in honour of Oliver Taplin

Conference paper

Tales of Kings and Cup-bearers in History and Myth

Chapter
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Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology

The Art of Stesichorus

Conference paper

'... as though Homer never wrote': Homer, Hipponax, and composition by mode

Conference paper