Books by Gregory Nagy

The ancient Greeks’ concept of “the hero” was very different from what we understand by the term today. In 24 installments, based on the Harvard course Gregory Nagy has taught and refined since the 1970s, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores civilization’s roots in Classical literature, a lineage that continues to challenge and inspire us.

Gregory Nagy analyzes metonymy as a mental process that complements metaphor. If metaphor is a substitution of something unfamilar for something familiar, metonymy connects something familiar with something else already familiar. Nagy offers close readings of over one hundred examples of metonymy in the arts of Greek and other cultures.

Homer the Preclassic considers the development of the Homeric poems-in particular the Iliad and Odyssey-during the time when they were still part of the oral tradition. Gregory Nagy traces the evolution of rival "e;Homers"e; and the different versions of Homeric poetry in this pretextual period, reconstructed over a time frame extending back from the sixth century BCE to the Bronze Age. Accurate in their linguistic detail and surprising in their implications, Nagy's insights conjure the Greeks' nostalgia for the imagined "e;epic space"e; of Troy and for the resonances and distortions this mythic past provided to the various Greek constituencies for whom the Homeric poems were so central and definitive.

This book examines the overall testimony of Plato as an expert about the cultural legacy of these Homeric performances. Plato's fine ear for language--in this case the technical language of high-class artisans like rhapsodes--picks up on a variety of authentic expressions that echo the talk of rhapsodes as they once practiced their art.

This book is about the reception of Homeric poetry from the fifth through the first century BCE. The aim of this book, which centers on ancient concepts of Homer as the author of a body of poetry that we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey, is to show how Homer's work became a classic in the days of the Athenian empire and later.

Gregory Nagy here provides a far-reaching assessment of the relationship between myth and ritual in ancient Greek society. Nagy illuminates in particular the forces of interaction and change that transformed the Indo-European linguistic and cultural heritage...