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Homeric Catalogue, Numerical Authority, and the Uncountable
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2021
Chapter 1 argues that the list in Homer serves as a mode of counting and establishing authoritative standards of numeration. In the pre-coinage context of the Homeric poems, authors and speakers use lists to project authority and accountability to an audience; the poet himself, moreover, emerges as the ultimate meta-counter. More than a literary device, catalogues of objects in Homer allow for the comparison, valuation, and trade of items in the absence of other standards of measurement. Finally, drawing on Eco’s conception of the list as “potentially infinite,” I suggest further that these sets of texts engage in a paradoxical and deliberately obfuscating practice of presenting their contents as uncountably large.
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