Background
KIRK, Geoffrey was born on December 3, 1921 in Nottingham. Son of Frederic T. Kirk and Enid H. Pentecost.
(The literature of the western world begins with one of it...)
The literature of the western world begins with one of its greatest achievements. The stories of the wrath of Achilles and its consequences, and of the wanderings of Odysseus, have been admired from ancient times to the present day. The two great epics can be read and enjoyed, unreflectingly, as tales of adventure; or they can be studied as literature, yielding, as insight and understanding grow, a deeper and more permanent pleasure. Professor Kirk's book is the means to this pleasure. It is a vivid and comprehensive account of the background and development of the Homeric poems and of their quality as literature. The epics are seen primarily as oral poetry, sung for centuries by illiterate singers; and from this view rises discussion of the problems of authorship and transmission. The historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence is also examined; and the possible contributions of the Mycenaean period and of the subsequent Dark Age are shown in a fresh light.
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(This is a shortened and rearranged version of The Songs o...)
This is a shortened and rearranged version of The Songs of Homer, Professor Kirk's vivid and comprehensive account of the background and development of the Homeric poems and of their quality as literature. His purpose remains the same: to develop a comprehensive and unified view of the nature of the Iliad and the Odyssey, of their relation to the oral heroic poetry of the Greek Dark Age, and of their creation as poems by two great singers in the eighth century BC. The essential attitudes and arguments of the earlier work have been retained, but the whole has been reduced in detail by some two-fifths. The sections on the historical background, the possibilities of Achaean and Aeolic epic, and the technical aspects of the language have been abbreviated most, and those dealing with oral poetry and the Iliad and Odyssey as literature least of all. Professor Kirk has also changed the order and increased the number of chapters. Almost all the Greek is translated, and the new version can be more easily used by those who are primarily interested in classics in translation, comparative literature, oral poetry, or the epic in general.
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(The Songs of Homer (Cambridge University Press, 1962) was...)
The Songs of Homer (Cambridge University Press, 1962) was a major contribution to Homeric studies, establishing important theories about the composition, structure and transmission of the monumental poems. In this 1976 volume, Geoffrey Kirk returns to Homer, but the themes are largely different. He considers in particular the nature of oral and epic poetry, and the meaning of an oral tradition. There are problems here of interest not only to classicists and Homeric specialists but also to students of English and comparative literature, and to anthropologists concerned with the literature of traditional societies. Those pieces that were previously published were revised and unified for the volume. The longest section, on 'the oral and the literary epic', is derived from the J. H. Gray Lectures, which Professor Kirk delivered in Cambridge in 1974 and which had not been previously published in any form.
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(Con enorme agudeza crítica y desde su experiencia de hele...)
Con enorme agudeza crítica y desde su experiencia de helenista familiarizado tanto con la literatura griega como con las constantes del pensamiento filosófico y prefilosófico de los antiguos griegos, G. S. Kirk pasa revista en este libro a las teorías generales que han tratado de explicar el fenómeno de los mitos, desde la escuela antropológica inglesa y el funcionalismo de Malinowski al estructuralismo de Lévi-Strauss, pasando por las teorías de Cassirer sobre la expresión simbólica, y las exposiciones psicológicas de Freud y Jung sobre fantasía y sueños y arquetipos y símbolos.Por todo ello, y por la sencillez y soltura de su expresión, esta obra es de imprescindible lectura para especialistas, estudiantes de ciencias sociales, arte y literatura y, por supuesto, para cualquier persona interesada en la significación de los mitos.
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( This book attempts to come to grips with a set of widel...)
This book attempts to come to grips with a set of widely ranging but connected problems concerning myths: their relation to folktales on the one hand, to rituals on the other; the validity and scope of the structuralist theory of myth; the range of possible mythical functions; the effects of developed social institutions and literacy; the character and meaning of ancient Near-Eastern myths and their influence on Greece; the special forms taken by Greek myths and their involvement with rational modes of thought; the status of myths as expressions of the unconscious, as allied with dreams, as universal symbols, or as accidents of primarily narrative aims. Almost none of these problems has been convincingly handled, even in a provisional way, up to the present, and this failure has vitiated not only such few general discussions as exist of the nature, meanings and functions of myths but also, in many cases, the detailed assessment of individual myths of different cultures. The need for a coherent treatment of these and related problems, and one that is not concerned simply to propagate a particular universalistic theory, seems undeniable. How far the present book will satisfactorily fill such a need remains to be seen. At least it makes a beginning, even if in doing so it risks the criticism of being neither fish nor fowl. Sociologists and folklorists may find it, from their specialized viewpoints, a little simplistic in places; and a few classical colleagues will not forgive me for straying far beyond Greek myths, even though these can hardly be understood in isolation or solely in the light of studies in cult and ritual. Others may find it less easy than anthropologists, sociologists, historians of thought or students of French and English literature to accept the relevance of Levi-Strauss to some of these matters; but his theory contains the one important new idea in this field since Freud, it is complicated and largely untested, and it demands careful attention from anyone attempting a broad understanding of the subject. The beliefs of Freud and Jung, on the other hand, are a more familiar element in the situation and have given rise to an enormous secondary literature, much of it arbitrary and some of it absurd. The author has tried to isolate the crucial ideas and subject them to a pointed, if too brief, critique; so too with those of Ernst Cassirer.
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(Las teorÃas sobre los mitos son abundantes. Se han abord...)
Las teorÃas sobre los mitos son abundantes. Se han abordado como ecos de sucesos meteorológicos y cosmológicos, como propuestas de explicación de algunos de los sucesos más extraños sucedidos en el mundo, como una especie de ciencia primitiva, como historias inventadas para legitimar costumbres o instituciones ya existentes
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(Publisher: Theories of myths abound. They have been seen...)
Publisher: Theories of myths abound. They have been seen as echoes of cosmological and meteorological events; as attempts to explain the odder goings-on in the world-a sort of primitive science; as stories invented to validate existing customs or institutions; as evocative tales of a creative past; and as justification for primitive rituals. Folklorists, psychoanalysts, philosophers, and anthropologists have all had their say. Originally published in 1974, The Nature of Greek Myths investigates the complex nature of Greek myths in order to guide the reader to a deeper understanding of the fundamental characteristics of all myths and their meaning. Perhaps for the first time, these "traditional tales" and their remarkable contribution to Western culture are provided with a commentary that considers the development and function of Greek mythology from its beginnings in the oral tradition (and tracing the Near-Eastern origins of recurrent motifs to their source in Mesopotamia and Egypt) to its ultimate role as a key element in philosophy.
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philologist university professor
KIRK, Geoffrey was born on December 3, 1921 in Nottingham. Son of Frederic T. Kirk and Enid H. Pentecost.
Kirk was educated at Rossall School and Clare College, Cambridge.
He was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1974 to 1984. Military service
Kirk"s time at Cambridge was interrupted by war: he joined the Royal Navy in 1941 and was commissioned as an officer one year later. He spent much of his service in the Aegean Sea with the Levant Schooner Flotilla, which included both schooners and caïques engaged in irregular operations supporting Allied special forces.
Kirk fought on many Greek islands and along a wide section of the Turkish coast, and was engaged in operations at Tekegas Barnu, Didyma, Icaria and Andros.
He was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross (Distinguished Service Cross) in 1945. Academic career
After the war Kirk returned to Cambridge.
He graduated in 1946 and was awarded a research fellowship at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He later became a lecturer and then a Reader at Cambridge.
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1959 and served as its vice-president in 1972-1973.
He also held visiting positions at Yale and Harvard. In 1974 he became the 35th Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. Later life
Following his retirement, in 1982, Kirk produced a six-volume commentary on the Iliad and updated his book The Presocratic Philosophers with J. East. Raven and M. Schofield.
Kirk had married Barbara Traill in 1950 and they had a daughter, Lydia.
( This book attempts to come to grips with a set of widel...)
(This is a shortened and rearranged version of The Songs o...)
(The Songs of Homer (Cambridge University Press, 1962) was...)
(Con enorme agudeza crítica y desde su experiencia de hele...)
(The literature of the western world begins with one of it...)
(Las teorÃas sobre los mitos son abundantes. Se han abord...)
(Publisher: Theories of myths abound. They have been seen...)
Married Kirsten Jensen Ricks in 1975.