This was pretty straightforward. I hunted around for stuff on Homeric similes; turns out others have noticed the similes in
Homer. Quite a few. Wilamowitz among them. Fortunately I'm not writing about the similes in Homer, hah, because if I were I'd be reading for 3 years before I could write a word. I read Taplin's review of Moulton's book on similes (
Homeric Similes, 1977, certainly much has been written since, but it was the first thing that came to hand). (See, for a very cursory list, my rapidly growing "
Secondary Literature" page. This is not, I need hardly say, a list of works I have already read. It is aspirational.)
Moulton assumes that when he sees subtlety in Homer it's because it's there, not because it accidentally accreted into the poem. I'm inclined to agree but again I am not writing about that, I am so very grateful to say; I am writing about Oswald, and I can certainly argue that subtlety in
Memorial is "part of the poem and not there by coincidence" (Taplin, 184). I have to admit though that
Memorial's reading of the
Iliad highlights a great deal of subtlety in the original text; I suspect that's by design too.
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