| In this thesis I present four of my own discoveries relating to archaic poetic language and lay out the implications for the prehistory and development of both epic and lyric poetic genres in early Greece. In my discussions I attempt to forge a methodology encompassing several different strands of study. Beyond the solid foundation of traditional Classical philology, I adopt the perspective afforded by comparative linguistics; the method in Homeric lexicography pioneered by Manu Leumann; Homeric 'neoanalysis' (the study of the 'sources' of the Homeric poems); Indoiranistik (the tradition of the close comparative study of Old Indic and Iranian languages and ritual texts and their further Indo-European background); and the study of Near Eastern literatures. I introduce a more nuanced examination of the dynamics of inheritance in poetic language; I do not merely record the results of successful comparative forays, but go further, examining in each instance what sort of transformations inherited phraseology undergoes, how such material is reanalyzed, and finally how certain larger traditional contexts (e.g., praise poetry) conspire to preserve archaisms of language. |
