Singing Images in Homer - Metaphor, Context, and Function in the Epic Formula.
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Metaphor in Homer has received welcome attention in recent years, but unsolved puzzles remain. This talk will offer new accounts of the famous Homeric phrases “(s)he spoke forth winged words” and “rosy-fingered Dawn appeared,” which recur dozens of times in the Iliad and Odyssey and are mostly considered to be “dead metaphors.” By "dead metaphors," I mean that the phrases themselves are conventionally taken to mean little more than “(s)he said” and “it was the next day” and are not thought to be sensitive to context: the metaphors of words with “wings (or feathers)” and of an animate Dawn with “rosy fingers (or toes)” are semantically inert. Instead, the prevalence of "winged words" and "rosy-fingered Dawn" is explained as largely a product of inherited, formulaic convenience, a useful and artful stalling tactic for a long line of oral poets composing in hexameters while performing. According to this interpretation the “Homeric formula” is primarily important to scholars as a diagnostic criterion of the repetitive nature of oral poetry. This talk challenges several presuppositions in the above account by outlining some recent theories of language and formula that change how we might interpret these metaphors, specifically their meaning and function within the Homeric poems.
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