Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake
Homer's Iliad: The Shield of Memory by Kenneth Atchity
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Drat! I missed it as a freebie!
I put the title on the watch list at
ereaderiq.com, for them to notify me when it goes down to 50 cents or lower. It had been free just last March (I didn't see it then), so maybe it won't be all that long before it becomes free again.
There are no reviews for the book, yet, at Amazon or GoodReads, but author Atchity writes in a broad range of genres, and all of his books at Amazon, at least, that are rated, are rated high to outstanding.
I have really become interested lately in the
Odyssey and the
Iliad. Frankly, the stories bore me to tears; I really don't understand why it is such a classic, etc. Probably because of a shortage of sophistication on my part.
However, I have become intensely interested in the composition and transmission of both the
Odyssey and the
Iliad. Scholars disagree over whether or not there really was a Homer, but they seem to be pretty much on the same page concerning the matter of the transmission of these books usually ascribed to him--they were passed on
orally for many years (they were composed when it was a pre-literate time in that geographical area, and that was so for quite some time afterwards) after their composition. Can you imagine memorizing the entirety of one or the other of those books? Of course, the ones memorizing and reciting the stories used various mnemonic (memory-aiding) devices, but still . . . .
Scanning the table of contents of Atchity's book, he apparently doesn't say much about the composition and transmission of the texts. But it seems that there are many pieces of ancillary information that will be of help in my study.
Of course, because I am so frugal, and knowing that the book had been free before, I'm not going to pay more than about 50 cents for it under any circumstances. I've got plenty of other things to read about the subject that I can devote my time to, until the book goes down in price again.
