Poetry as performance : Homer and beyond

Introduction: a brief survey of concepts and aims Part I. Mimesis and the Making of Identity in Poetic Performance: 1. The Homeric nightingale and the poetics of variation in the art of a troubadour 2. Mimesis, models of singers, and the meaning of a Homeric epithet 3. Mimesis in Homer and beyond 4. Mimesis in lyric: Sappho's Aphrodite and the Changing Woman of the Apache Part II. Fixed Text in Theory, Shifting Words in Performance: 5. Multiform epic and Aristarchus' quest for the real Homer 6. Homer as script 7. Homer as 'scripture' Epilogue: dead poets and recomposed performers Appendix Bibliography Index.