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Sunday, March 04, 2007

The Chicago Homer

Even before I found the Chicago Homer tonight (more on it below, with a link) there were many things to like about Chicago — even for me, who has never been there. And probably never will be.

For instance, in the middle of the 19th-century she became the livestock centre of America, butchering and shipping delicious beef and pork all over the USA.

There is Wrigley Field, which opened in 1914.

And there was Chicago Stadium, with its awesome Barton organ, demolished in 1995 to my utter horror and dismay and eternal resentment (I have not watched hockey since).

There is the old "Abby" — the icebreaker MV Abegweit, which carried passengers and freight between Borden, Prince Edward Island and Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick until she was retired in 1982 — now serving as the headquarters of the Columbia Yacht Club (picture of the Abby) in Chicago.

There is humble servant, a somewhat frequent and very thoughtful commenter on this blog.

And now there is The Chicago Homer, a great resource for anyone interested in ancient Greek Literature

"The Chicago Homer is a bilingual database that uses the search and display capabilities of electronic texts to make the distinctive features of Early Greek epic accessible to readers with and without Greek. Its component parts are

1. Standard electronic editions of the texts, revised for maximum utility in a searchable database, and translations by Richmond Lattimore and Daryl Hine that closely observe the line structure of the originals and lend themselves to interlinear display.

2. A set of database tables that support lexical, phrasal, morphological, and narratological searches.

3. A Web-based user interface that gives access to the texts and supports queries to the database.

The most salient feature of the Chicago Homer is its ability to make visible the network of phrasal repetition that is so distinctive a feature of Homeric poetry. We reserve the rest of this introduction to a brief discussion of repetitions before turning to a detailed account of the texts and translation, the database and its parts, and the user interface."
I believe I will be making some use of The Chicago Homer in both the near and the distant future.

7 comments:

John said...

I think you'd find ...the Bicameral Mind, mentioned a few posts ago, fascinating. I think Whitman would've, too.

Thanks for the U of C info. Speaking of dusty old lit — is Harold Bloom from Chicago or the Chicago School? Just curious, because his is the first name that comes to mind when I think of dusty old lit ... not that I have anything against Bloom or dusty old lit.

John said...

It's a deal.

I haven't read Allan Bloom, but I gotta say I like the title of the one you mention.

I have read The Western Canon, and enjoyed it immensely.

Zachariah Wells said...

Didn't take it as a dis at all, HS, was just put in mind of the Sandburg poem, for which I am grateful, as it's a personal fave, even tho I've never set foot in or eyes on Chicago.

(John, for some reason, I can't get the visual verification to appear on Firefox, so had to open up IE to post this. This a problem for you?)

John said...

Nope, no problem for me, Zach. Might be something in your firefox settings. Or an extension. Try posting a comment at Brenda's blog, see if you get the same problem. She uses the same comment settings as me, I think.

Zachariah Wells said...

Yep, same damn thing. Hm.

Zachariah Wells said...

Downloaded a new firefox and she works now. I know you must be relieved!

John said...

Yes, my mind is at peace. I can pass from this world now with no regrets.