Why Homer Matters

A History

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, Poetry History & Criticism, Ancient & Classical, Nonfiction, History, Ancient History, Greece
Cover of the book Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson, Henry Holt and Co.
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Adam Nicolson ISBN: 9781627791809
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. Publication: November 18, 2014
Imprint: Henry Holt and Co. Language: English
Author: Adam Nicolson
ISBN: 9781627791809
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication: November 18, 2014
Imprint: Henry Holt and Co.
Language: English

"Adam Nicolson writes popular books as popular books used to be, a breeze rather than a scholarly sweat, but humanely erudite, elegantly written, passionately felt…and his excitement is contagious."—James Wood, The New Yorker

Adam Nicolson sees the Iliad and the Odyssey as the foundation myths of Greek—and our—consciousness, collapsing the passage of 4,000 years and making the distant past of the Mediterranean world as immediate to us as the events of our own time.

Why Homer Matters is a magical journey of discovery across wide stretches of the past, sewn together by the poems themselves and their metaphors of life and trouble. Homer's poems occupy, as Adam Nicolson writes "a third space" in the way we relate to the past: not as memory, which lasts no more than three generations, nor as the objective accounts of history, but as epic, invented after memory but before history, poetry which aims "to bind the wounds that time inflicts."

The Homeric poems are among the oldest stories we have, drawing on deep roots in the Eurasian steppes beyond the Black Sea, but emerging at a time around 2000 B.C. when the people who would become the Greeks came south and both clashed and fused with the more sophisticated inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean.
The poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

"Adam Nicolson writes popular books as popular books used to be, a breeze rather than a scholarly sweat, but humanely erudite, elegantly written, passionately felt…and his excitement is contagious."—James Wood, The New Yorker

Adam Nicolson sees the Iliad and the Odyssey as the foundation myths of Greek—and our—consciousness, collapsing the passage of 4,000 years and making the distant past of the Mediterranean world as immediate to us as the events of our own time.

Why Homer Matters is a magical journey of discovery across wide stretches of the past, sewn together by the poems themselves and their metaphors of life and trouble. Homer's poems occupy, as Adam Nicolson writes "a third space" in the way we relate to the past: not as memory, which lasts no more than three generations, nor as the objective accounts of history, but as epic, invented after memory but before history, poetry which aims "to bind the wounds that time inflicts."

The Homeric poems are among the oldest stories we have, drawing on deep roots in the Eurasian steppes beyond the Black Sea, but emerging at a time around 2000 B.C. when the people who would become the Greeks came south and both clashed and fused with the more sophisticated inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean.
The poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.

More books from Henry Holt and Co.

Cover of the book Stronger in the Broken Places by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book The Bird Market of Paris by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book City Mouse, Country Mouse by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book Faith at War by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book Dig Dig Digging ABC by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book To Hell and Back by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book Turn Right at the Fountain by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book Chickens to the Rescue by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book Apollo 8 by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book Debt Free! by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book Chester Alan Arthur by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book The Monster Returns by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book Secrets of a Freelance Writer by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book Cool City by Adam Nicolson
Cover of the book The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Adam Nicolson
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy