David F. Elmer

Curriculum Vitae
 

 

I am a scholar of ancient Greek literature whose primary interests are divided between the Homeric epics and the much later prose narratives commonly referred to as the ‘Greek novels.’ In my teaching especially, but also in my research, I make occasional forays into the millennium or so of literary history that intervenes between the epics and the novels.

 

My approach to Homeric poetry is fundamentally rooted in the intellectual tradition deriving from the work of Milman Parry, whose theory of oral composition in performance fundamentally transformed approaches to the Iliad and Odyssey. While Parry, however, focused on the mechanics of formulaic phraseology, I tend to be drawn to questions arising from large-scale narrative structures. My 2013 monograph, The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making and the Iliad, takes as its starting point certain distinctive formulaic expressions, but it quickly moves to derive from these a set of implications about the way in which the Iliad represents its relation to tradition. I am committed to the view that the Homeric texts are fundamentally and essentially the products of an oral tradition, but I have also tried to demonstrate in my work that the traditional language of the poems is not nearly so restrictive nor as ‘automatic’ as a ‘strict Parryist’ view might seem to entail (see, e.g., “The ‘Narrow Road’ and the Ethics of Language Use in the Iliad and the Odyssey”).

 

In my work on the ancient novels, I have been primarily interested in these texts’ generic self-positioning, the models of interpretation they put forward, and the ethical questions they pose. I view the novels as examples of a self-consciously ‘Odyssean’ discourse that implicitly subverts or critiques dominant narrative modes by manipulating narrative techniques and ethical norms.

 

Ever since a fellowship year (1998-99) spent in Zagreb, Croatia, where I enjoyed an affiliation with the Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku and benefited from the mentorship of Dr. Tanja Perić-Polonijo, I have made the study of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian oral epic song a part of my research program. I serve as Curator of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, a uniquely important archive of South Slavic (and other) oral traditions. I am also the editor of the open-access journal Oral Tradition.

 

I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where I began studying Greek and Latin as a student at St. Ignatius High School. I am still a Midwesterner at heart.

 

I am also an avid practitioner of ‘analog’ (silver-gelatin) photography. The self-portrait shown above, made in collaboration with my wife, Bonnie Talbert, was shot with a mid-1960’s Rolleiflex camera on Ilford HP5+ film, developed in my home darkroom.