Deborah Beck
Biographic Data
| ID | 5636595 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deborah Beck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deborah |
| FAMILY NAME | Beck |
| SIGNATURE | BECK D |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Homeric Studies
In the century since Milman Parry argued that the Homeric poems arose from a long tradition of oral poetic performance, Homeric studies has been grappling in various ways with that argument. The most fundamental question has been the nature and function of the ‘formula’, famously defined by Parry as ‘an expression regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express an essential idea’ (M. Parry, The Making of Homeric Verse [1987], p. 13…
The Stories of Similes in Greek and Roman Epic
Just as the story of an epic poem is woven from characters and plot, so too the individual similes within an epic create a unique simile world. Like any other story, it is peopled by individual characters, happenings, and experiences, such as the shepherd and his flocks, a storm at sea, or predators hunting prey. The simile world that complements the epic mythological story is re-imagined afresh in relation to the themes of each epic poem. As Deb…
Repetition, Communication, and Meaning in the Ancient World
This edited volume, arising from the 2019 conference “Orality and Literacy: Repetition,” explores some of the many forms and uses of repetition, in poetry, philosophy, and inscriptions, from Homeric epic through the Latin novel and the Gospels to reception in the twentieth century. All human communication depends on repeating signs that are comprehensible to the speaker and the addressee. Yet “repetition” takes many specific forms, in different p…
Para-Narratives in the Odyssey
Reviewed by: Para-Narratives in the Odyssey: Stories in the Frame by Maureen Alden Deborah Beck Maureen Alden. Para-Narratives in the Odyssey: Stories in the Frame. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xii, 424. $110.00. ISBN 978-0-19-929106-9. This book is a companion to Alden's Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad (Oxford 2000). Like the earlier study, it aims to show how "subsidiary narratives ... explore and interpret th…
Homer in Performance
Chapter Seven Odysseus Polyonymous
The Voice of the Seer in the Iliad and the Odyssey
Speech Presentation in Homeric Epic
The Iliad and the Odyssey are emotional powerhouses largely because of their extensive use of direct speech. Yet this characteristic of the Homeric epics has led scholars to underplay the poems' use of non-direct speech, the importance of speech represented by characters, and the overall sophistication of Homeric narrative as measured by its approach to speech representation. In this pathfinding study by contrast, Deborah Beck undertakes the firs…
The Presentation of Song in Homer’s Odyssey
This chapter focuses in detail at how song is presented in the Odyssey. First, it provides overviews of relevant scholarship, both about four major speech presentation techniques that appear in songs and about song in Homeric poetry. Then the chapter describes the overall patterns for speech presentation in song, noting the striking differences between these patterns and those for any other kind of speech in the Homeric poems. Finally, it analyze…
Speech Act Types, Conversational Exchange, and the Speech Representational Spectrum in Homer
Ecphrasis, Interpretation, and Audience in Aeneid 1 and Odyssey 8
In the first ecphrasis in Vergil's Aeneid (1.441–94) describing Dido's temple to Juno through the eyes of Aeneas, Aeneas comes across as an isolated and confused interpreter of images of his sufferings: he understands the images he sees in one way, while the external audience understands them and his interpretation of them differently. Odysseus is neither alone nor confused when he hears Demodocus' songs in Odyssey 8. Moreover, the Odyssey—unlike…
Odysseus
Odysseus
Ecphrasis, Interpretation, and Audience in Aeneid 1 and Odyssey 8
In the first ecphrasis in Vergil's Aeneid (1.441–94) describing Dido's temple to Juno through the eyes of Aeneas, Aeneas comes across as an isolated and confused interpreter of images of his sufferings: he understands the images he sees in one way, while the external audience understands them and his interpretation of them differently. Odysseus is neither alone nor confused when he hears Demodocus' songs in Odyssey 8. Moreover, the Odyssey—unlike…
Speech Act Types, Conversational Exchange, and the Speech Representational Spectrum in Homer
Speech Presentation in Homeric Epic
The Iliad and the Odyssey are emotional powerhouses largely because of their extensive use of direct speech. Yet this characteristic of the Homeric epics has led scholars to underplay the poems' use of non-direct speech, the importance of speech represented by characters, and the overall sophistication of Homeric narrative as measured by its approach to speech representation. In this pathfinding study by contrast, Deborah Beck undertakes the firs…
The Presentation of Song in Homer’s Odyssey
This chapter focuses in detail at how song is presented in the Odyssey. First, it provides overviews of relevant scholarship, both about four major speech presentation techniques that appear in songs and about song in Homeric poetry. Then the chapter describes the overall patterns for speech presentation in song, noting the striking differences between these patterns and those for any other kind of speech in the Homeric poems. Finally, it analyze…
The Voice of the Seer in the Iliad and the Odyssey
Homer in Performance
Chapter Seven Odysseus Polyonymous
Para-Narratives in the Odyssey
Reviewed by: Para-Narratives in the Odyssey: Stories in the Frame by Maureen Alden Deborah Beck Maureen Alden. Para-Narratives in the Odyssey: Stories in the Frame. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xii, 424. $110.00. ISBN 978-0-19-929106-9. This book is a companion to Alden's Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad (Oxford 2000). Like the earlier study, it aims to show how "subsidiary narratives ... explore and interpret th…
Repetition, Communication, and Meaning in the Ancient World
This edited volume, arising from the 2019 conference “Orality and Literacy: Repetition,” explores some of the many forms and uses of repetition, in poetry, philosophy, and inscriptions, from Homeric epic through the Latin novel and the Gospels to reception in the twentieth century. All human communication depends on repeating signs that are comprehensible to the speaker and the addressee. Yet “repetition” takes many specific forms, in different p…
The Stories of Similes in Greek and Roman Epic
Just as the story of an epic poem is woven from characters and plot, so too the individual similes within an epic create a unique simile world. Like any other story, it is peopled by individual characters, happenings, and experiences, such as the shepherd and his flocks, a storm at sea, or predators hunting prey. The simile world that complements the epic mythological story is re-imagined afresh in relation to the themes of each epic poem. As Deb…
Homeric Studies
In the century since Milman Parry argued that the Homeric poems arose from a long tradition of oral poetic performance, Homeric studies has been grappling in various ways with that argument. The most fundamental question has been the nature and function of the ‘formula’, famously defined by Parry as ‘an expression regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express an essential idea’ (M. Parry, The Making of Homeric Verse [1987], p. 13…
Art (9 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (9 works) · History (8 works) · Literature (8 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · EPIC (3 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (3 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (2 works)