Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Each of the two books about Greek literature published in 1987 that have impressed me most is the first book of a young scholar, based on his doctoral dis- sertation.
The American scholar David Shive in Naming Achilles (OUP, £25) tests Milman Parry's theory that in the Homeric epics a great number of crystallised formulas are employed with an astonishing economy and absence of variation. This theory has for many years been an article of faith with most English-speaking scholars, and since it leaves the poet virtually no room for innovation or originality, it has precluded its believers from properly appreciating Homer's poetry. Shive has shown that the so-called 'theory of economy' does not work, its apparent cogency being largely due to its inventor's habit of working from indexes and concordances rather than from Homer's text.
The Englishman Malcolm Heath in The Poetics of Greek Tragedy (Duckworth, £29.50) first shows that the ancients them- selves thought of tragedy as designed to give pleasure and to stimulate the emotions rather than to communicate philosophical or intellectual ideas, and then sets out to show by examining actual tragedies that they were right.
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