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Title details for Hearing Homer's Song by Robert Kanigel - Available

Hearing Homer's Song

The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry

by Robert Kanigel
Richard Poe
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
From the acclaimed biographer of Jane Jacobs and Srinivasa Ramanujan comes the first full life and work of arguably the most influential classical scholar of the twentieth century, who overturned long-entrenched notions of ancient epic poetry and enlarged the very idea of literature.
In this literary detective story, Robert Kanigel gives us a long overdue portrait of an Oakland druggist's son who became known as the "Darwin of Homeric studies." So thoroughly did Milman Parry change our thinking about the origins of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey that scholars today refer to a "before" Parry and an "after." Kanigel describes the "before," when centuries of readers, all the way up until Parry's trailblazing work in the 1930's, assumed that the Homeric epics were "written" texts, the way we think of most literature; and the "after" that we now live in, where we take it for granted that they are the result of a long and winding oral tradition. Parry made it his life's work to develop and prove this revolutionary theory, and Kanigel brilliantly tells his remarkable story—cut short by Parry's mysterious death by gunshot wound at the age of thirty-three.
From UC Berkeley to the Sorbonne to Harvard to Yugoslavia—where he traveled to prove his idea definitively by studying its traditional singers of heroic poetry—we follow Parry on his idiosyncratic journey, observing just how his early notions blossomed into a full-fledged theory. Kanigel gives us an intimate portrait of Parry's marriage to Marian Thanhouser and their struggles as young parents in Paris, and explores the mystery surrounding Parry's tragic death at the Palms Hotel in Los Angeles. Tracing Parry's legacy to the modern day, Kanigel explores how what began as a way to understand the Homeric epics became the new field of "oral theory," which today illuminates everything from Beowulf to jazz improvisation, from the Old Testament to hip-hop.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 27, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593349175
      • File size: 288492 KB
      • Duration: 10:01:01

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This listenable biography of classical scholar Milman Parry is the third audiobook of Robert Kanigel's distinctive histories of lesser-known but transformational figures. In field work in Yugoslavia in the 1930s, Parry demonstrated that long narrative poems like the epics attributed to Homer were actually the work of many voices--composed, revised, and passed on through generations. Parry's scholarly life, his uneasy marriage, and his early death aren't of great dramatic interest. But his work and achievements, along with the America and Europe of his time, are richly portrayed here. Richard Poe is the most engaging of narrators. His voice is sensitive to nuance and able to sustain a narrative lacking significant dramatic action. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 19, 2021
      In this gripping biography, Kanigel (On an Irish Island) offers a sterling portrait of American poetry scholar Milman Parry (1902–1935) and his “big idea” that the Iliad and Odyssey were the products of generations of pre-literate “singers.” This idea drove Parry to pursue a doctorate at the Sorbonne, and while in Paris, he was advised by a fellow scholar to do field work in the Balkans. Parry did, seeking in the performances of Serbian epic singers clues about the Homeric tradition. Kanigel traces the influence of Parry’s work, which caused a fundamental change in how epic poetry was understood once Parry proved Homer’s works and written epics were “different animals altogether.” On the personal front, Kanigel delivers a fascinating account of Parry’s marriage and the mysterious circumstances around his death by gunshot shortly after his return from Yugoslavia (a handgun in his bag accidentally fired, though Kanigel also considers theories that it was suicide or that his wife shot him). Expertly weaving the personal and the academic, Kanigel movingly notes that Parry’s fixation on his theory and his inexorable work ethic drove a wedge between him and his wife. Meticulously researched and full of fascinating detail, this is a remarkable account.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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