American Classical League

Review
Reviewed Work(s): Pointing at the Past: From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics
by EGBERT J. BAKKER
Review by: SHEILA MURNAGHAN
Source: The Classical Outlook, Vol. 84, No. 3 (SPRING 2007), p. 133
Published by: American Classical League
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43939462
Accessed: 25-06-2019 13:10 UTC

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Volume 84, Number 3 The Classical Outlook / Spring 2007 133
communication
as axiomatic that which needs to be proved - namely, inthat
linguistics
the and cognitive psychology. T
results are found primarily
history of the Greek cities of Asia can be periodized around the in his book Poetry in Speech: Orali
arrival of Rome. In the absence of any explicit testimony that 1997) and in the essays collecte
and Homeric Discourse (Cornell
here. These essays
Rome interfered with the institutions of governance appeared
in these over a period reaching back to 1991
cities
but they have been
(a problem taken up only at pp. 302-03!), why should we assumeskillfully converted into an integrated whole
by means
that it is Roman rule - rather than imperial power of as
frequent
such cross-references
- that and a preface that outline
made a difference? That is to say, in whatthe authors intellectual
meaningful sensetrajectory.
were
That trajectory
these cities "free and autonomous" in the Hellenistic is summarized
period? lhe in his subtitle: the earliest
essays deal with the formula,
structure of the book gives the uncomfortable sense of following stressing the responsiveness of
seemingly formulaic
the Greeks in privileging ethnicity in historical expressions to context, but the later essay
and political
analysis: imperial rule over Greeks bydwell on the occasion
non-Greeks of performance as the crucial context f
demands
understanding Homeric
investigation; imperial rule by Greeks over Greeks is naturalized poetics. Central to Bakker s vision is ep
and taken as normative. performance as a process by which past events are evoked in t
A second concern derives from Dmitrievspresent. Poetic speech is
arguments a medium designed above all to enact t
about
causation. How can one know whether the ongoing
changespresence of the past,
visible under and its stylistic peculiarities are mo
Rome came about because of Rome? Dmitrievs evidence is fruitfully understood in those terms. The essays record a growin
primarily textual and principally epigraphic; he concentrates oninterest in the practice of deixis, or pointing, as Bakker shows th
public monuments erected within civic (rather than, say, provincial, the speakers of Homeric poetry envision themselves as showin
imperial, or legal contexts); and his method consists primarily intheir audiences a vision of the past that they actively witness
the pursuit of lexemes. To his credit, he confronts head-on officialThis use of language as a way of pointing is shared by the poem
language of fantastic conservatism, whose timelessness worked to characters and narrators and is the goal of such stylistic feature
elide enormous social and demographic change. But Dmitriev doesas demonstratives, inferential particles, use of the augment, a
not to my mind provide a hermeneutic device sufficient to pierce even archaisms. For example, the use or non-use of the augmen
that language. Without any sense of the different imperial systemswith aorist verbs is not to be seen as a matter of linguistic histor
with which the cities interacted - whether regarding taxation orwhereby the older absence of the augment coincides with its new
customs duties or conflicts in law, across the Hellenistic and into observance because it is a metrically convenient anachronism
the Roman period - the cities and civil elites under study in thisRather, the augment retains in Homer an original deictic functio
work exist in a splendid and artificial isolation. and is therefore used at those points where the speaker aims
This is in many respects a learned and challenging book. Nearly particular vividness: similes, divine epiphanies, moments when
every page assembles information one is pleased to have. But thethe direction of past events or the applicability of general truth
cumulative effect of its many valuable, discrete observations is notbecomes apparent in the present.
a truly historical argument about the many changes "that took As this discussion of the augment suggests, Bakker s work i
place in the administration and society of Greek cities in the technical and always rooted in textual detail. But these technic
Roman period" (6). studies underwrite a broader understanding of Homeric poetic
an image of the poet, not as a self-effacing transmitter of tradition
CLIFFORD ANDO but as a dynamic conjurer of the past, who makes us see wh
University of Chicago happened and what it means for us now. His conclusions help
us to better appreciate Homeric style, but also to think abou
cando @uchicago. edu
such questions as the role of the narrator in shaping the stor
the kinds of relationships the poet constructs with his audienc
and the ways in which these poems conceive of and dramatiz
Pointing at the Past : From Formula to Performance in Homeric
the vital activities of remembering the past and arriving at shar
Poetics . By EGBERT J. BAKKER. Cambridge MA: Harvard
Univ. Press, 2005. Pp. xiii and 205. Paper. $17.95. understandings of it.

SHEILA MURNAGHAN
This book comprises eight previously published papers, along
with one new one, by a leading figure in the critical project of University of Pennsylvania
understanding Homeric epic as a species of oral poetry. Milman smurnagh@sas. upenn. edu
Parry s identification of certain stylistic features, such as formulas
and the presence of linguistic variants from different periods, as
Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society: Oath-Making Rituals
aids to oral composition established the poems' oral character,
andasNarrative
but had an inhibiting effect on the interpretation of style an in the Iliad. By MARGO KITTS. New York
NY: to
instrument of meaning. Critics have struggled ever since Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005. Pp. 258. Cloth. $75
acknowledge the orality of Homeric poetry while still registering
its subtle and distinctive messages. Margo Kitts has an interesting interpretation of the Iliad as a
Bakker s contribution to this effort involves a shift in focus
war poem. It starts, she says, with Greeks "in Troy as warriors of the
away from oral composition as a specialized activitymost
with a
profane sort, seeking booty and fame" but, "drawn into the
oath-making
particular stylistic toolkit towards oral performance as a form of circle in Book 3" (174) - the Paris-Menelaus duel -
poetic expression that has much in common with other forms they become
of part of a narrative of ritual and ritual retribution
speech. He has thus turned for insights to recent work onthat functions "in a very high poetic register and as an attempt to
spoken

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