Homer's Winged Words

Steve Reece, Ph.D. (1990) in Classics, University of California, Los Angeles, is Professor of Classics at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He has published widely on Homeric studies, New Testament studies, comparative oral traditions, historical linguistics, and pedagogy.

"There is indeed no comparable work. Reece's book will be of interest to those interested in linguistic change and the history of Greek, prosody (in the broader sense encompassing e.g. rhythm, intonation, and syllabification, and not just metrics), and of course the Homeric Kunstsprache and the oral-formulaic theory of performance and composition. We are indebted to Reece for undertaking such a comprehensive investigation of the topic (the book is just over four-hundred pages)." - D.M. Goldstein, in: BMCR 2010.03.03"While the book can be read piecemeal, Reece builds a solid and cumulative case for his thesis that poetry composed and experienced within an oral tradition is especially liable to certain kinds of verbal innovation, which in turn explains the origins of some of the most notoriously obscure Homeric expressions." - Jenny Strauss Clay, University of Virginia, in: Religious Studies Review, Vol. 37 Nr. 2 (2011)