The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters - Adam Nicolson

Full of interesting bits:

"Of about three thousand languages spoken today, seventy-eight have a written literature.  The rest exist in the mind and the mouth.  Language - man - is essentially oral."  p. 68

Homer can be seen as a remembering of the culture and life of the bronze age warriors.  This links him to the semi-pastoral tribes of the first Indo-Europeans who tamed the horse, first used wagons, and moved outwards as warrior bands from their traditional homeland to establish all the large european language groups of today.

It is an interesting read and personal engagement with Homer's work, especially the Odyssey.  Nicolson presents some interesting evaluations and personal reactions to the work.  A good introduction for actually reading the poems.



To find:
1) Milman Parry - important Homer scholar exploring pre-written storytelling tradition

2) Duncan Macdonald - storyteller from Hebrides, South Uist (The Man of the Habit - one story)

3) Homer - Odyssey - trans. Robert Fagles
    Homer - The Iliad - trans. Robert Fagles

4) The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry - Adam Parry

5) The Singer of Tales - Albert Lord

6) Indo-European Language and Culture:  An Introduction - Benjamin W. Anthony

7) The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia - Philip L. Kohl

8) Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World - J.P. Mallory
     and D.Q. Adams

9) Symbols and Warriors:  Images of the European Bronze Age - Richard J. Harrison

10) The Rise of Bronze Age Society - Kristian Kristiansen and Thomas B. Larsson

11) The Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard

12) European Societies in the Bronze Age - Anthony F. Harding