Tag Archives: HOmer

From Mere Bellies to the Bad Shaman, 2

(This second section juxtaposes in a somewhat speculative manner two key texts in the Western canon by Hesiod and Plato, using a favourite but hardly authoritative text by Julian Jaynes to get a handle on the argument, which is based … Continue reading

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Heroes and Homilies (1)

(This talk was delivered in the summer of 2014 at Bede’s World as part of their lecture series, and to accompany an exhibition curated by Roger Wollen, ‘Myths, Memories and Mysteries,’ which focussed on a number of contemporary artists influenced … Continue reading

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Love and the Romans, II

The great period of the love elegy, in which our five poets thrived, is actually quite brief. One hundred years, roughly, takes us from Catullus’ birth, around 84 BC, to Ovid’s death, in exile in Tomis in AD17. Within about … Continue reading

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Holocaust Memorial Day Reading

(This piece was written in February 2005 for the Blinking Eye website. I was judging their competition, and they asked me for something for the site. Every year for the last three years the writers associated with Newcastle University — … Continue reading

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