Self-study
P1
While a new surge of critical interest in the ancient Greek poems conventionally ascribed to Homer has taken place in the last twenty years or so, it was nonspecialists rather than professional scholars who studied the poetic aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey between, roughly, 1935 and 1970. ███
Intro topic ·
Study of ancient Greek poems
Singles out two poems: the Iliad and the Odyssey
Contrast ·
Nonspecialists and specialists
Nonspecialists focused on what made these poems great, while specialists focused on more loosely connected side topics
Author's perspective ·
Specialists emphasized the wrong things about these poems
Author quotes someone else to make this point
P2
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Explain phenomenon ·
Origins of specialists' "nonpoetical" emphasis
Legacy of Milman Parry's work on history of ancient Greek poetic traditions
P3
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Later developments ·
Return to poetical emphasis
Adam Parry built on Milman's work to bring focus back to the unique poetic aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Unclear whether Adam was a specialist or nonspecialist.
Passage Style
Single position
Spotlight
11.
The author of the passage ████ ████████
a
indicate that the ███████ █████ ████ █████████ ████████ ████ █████████ ██ ███ █████ ██ ███████ ███████
The author doesn’t suggest that Homer’s poems have “generally” received bad treatment by critics. Although the author would probably agree that many critics have focused on the wrong aspects of his work, this doesn’t imply that the work was poorly treated by most English critics.
b
prove that poets ██ ████ ██ ███████ ████ ██████████ ████████ ██████████ ██ ███ █████
The author doesn’t bring up Pope as an example of a poet who has emphasized the nonpoetic elements of Homer’s work. Rather, Pope is a poet who has an observation about critics in 1715; that observation is one that is similar to an observation the author is making now — that many critics have been interested in the nonpoetic aspects of Homer’s work.
c
illustrate that the ███████████ ████████ ████ ███████ ██ ██ ███████ ███████
This best captures the purpose of the quote. To understand the purpose of the quote, look at how the author introduces it: “The observations of the English poet Alexander Pope seemed as applicable in 1970 as they had been when he wrote them in 1715: according to Pope, the remarks of critics....” The author wants to show that critics of the past, just as critics from more recent times, have focused on the nonpoetic aspects of Homer’s work.
d
emphasize the problems ████████ ██ █████████ █████████ █████ ██████ ████ ██████ ███████
Pope’s quote, and the author’s purpose in introducing it, has nothing to do with the inherent problems of translating Greek poetry into modern English.
e
argue that poets ███ ████████ ███████ ████ ██████ ██████ █████ ███ ██████████████ ██ ██████
The author never argues that poets and literary critics rarely agree about the interpretation of poetry. We have no indication of what many poets think; we only get a quote from the poet Alexander Pope. The author brings Pope up to show that Pope made a similar observation to the one the author is making now concerning critics’ attention to nonpoetic aspects of Homer’s work.