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| Aspects of Indo-European Poetics | ||
| I. | The Field of Comparative Poetics: Introduction and Background | |
| 1. | The comparative method in linguistics and poetics | 3 |
| 2. | Sketch for a history of Indo-European poetics | 12 |
| 3. | Poetics as grammar: Typology of poetic devices, and some rules of poetic grammar | 28 |
| 4. | Poetics as repertory: The poetic traditions of the Indo-European world--sources and texts | 50 |
| 5. | The Indo-European poet: His social function and his art | 68 |
| 6. | The poet's truth: The power, particularity, and preserveration of the word | 85 |
| II. | Case Studies | |
| 7. | Greece and the art of the word | 97 |
| 8. | Vedic India and the art of the word | 109 |
| 9. | Ireland and the art of the syllable | 117 |
| 10. | Saxa loquuntur: The first age of poetry in Italy--Faliscan and South Picene | 126 |
| 11. | Most ancient Indo-Europeans | 135 |
| 12. | The comparison of formulaic sequences | 152 |
| 13. | An Indo-European stylistic figure | 165 |
| 14. | A late Indo-European traditional epithet | 170 |
| 15. | An Indo-European theme and formula: Imperishable fame | 173 |
| 16. | The hidden track of the cow: Obscure styles in Indo-European | 179 |
| III. | The Strophic Style: An Indo-European Poetic Form | |
| 17. | Some Indo-European prayers: Cato's lustration of the fields | 197 |
| 18. | Umbria: The Tables of Iguvium | 214 |
| 19. | Italy and India: The elliptic offering | 226 |
| 20. | Strophic structures as "rhythmic prose"? Italic | 229 |
| 21. | Strophic structures in Iranian | 232 |
| 22. | 'Truth of truth', 'most kavi of kavis', 'throng-lord of throngs': An Indo-Iranian stylistic figure | 241 |
| 23. | More strophic structures | 247 |
| 24. | Early Irish rosc | 255 |
| 25. | The Asvamedha or Horse Sacrifice: An Indo-European liturgical form | 265 |
| 26. | Orphic gold leaves and the great way of the soul: Strophic style, funerary ritual formula, and eschatology | 277 |
| How to Kill a Dragon in Indo-European: A Contribution to the Theory of the Formula | ||
| IV. | The Basic Formula and Its Variants in the Narration of the Myth | |
| 27. | Preliminaries | 297 |
| 28. | The root *g[superscript u]hen-: Vedic han- | 304 |
| 29. | The root *g[superscript u]hen-: Avestan jan- | 313 |
| 30. | The root *g[superscript u]hen-: Hittite kuen- and the Indo-European theme and formula | 321 |
| 31. | The slayer slain: A reciprocal formula | 324 |
| 32. | First variant: The root *udeh- | 330 |
| 33. | 'Like a reed': The Indo-European background of a Luvian ritual | 335 |
| 34. | Second variant: the root *terh[subscript 2]- | 343 |
| 35. | Latin tarentum, the ludi saeculares, and Indo-European eschatology | 347 |
| 36. | The myth in Greece: Variations on the formula and theme | 357 |
| 37. | Expansion of the formula: A recursive formulaic figure | 370 |
| 38. | Herakles, the formulaic hero | 374 |
| 39. | Hermes, Enualios, and Lukoworgos: The Serpent-slayer and the Man-slayer | 383 |
| 40. | Nektar and the adversary Death | 391 |
| 41. | The saga of Iphitos and the hero as monster | 398 |
| 42. | The name of Meleager | 408 |
| 43. | The Germanic world | 414 |
| 44. | Thor's hammer and the mace of Contract | 429 |
| V. | Some Indo-European Dragons and Dragon-Slayers | |
| 45. | Fergus mac Leti and the muirdris | 441 |
| 46. | Typhoeus and the Illuyankas | 448 |
| 47. | Python and Ahi Budhnya, the Serpent of the Deep | 460 |
| 48. | Azi dakaka, Visvarupa, and Geryon | 464 |
| VI. | From Myth to Epic | |
| 49. | From God to hero: The formulaic network in Greek | 471 |
| 50. | The best of the Achaeans | 483 |
| 51. | To be the death of: Transformation of the formula | 488 |
| 52. | The formula without the word: A note on Euripides and Lysias | 493 |
| 53. | The basic formula and the announcement of death | 499 |
| 54. | Further Indo-European comparisons and themes | 505 |
| 55. | The song of victory in Greek | 510 |
| VII. | From Myth to Charm | |
| 56. | From dragon to worm | 519 |
| 57. | The charms of Indo-European | 525 |
| 58. | Indo-European medical doctrine | 537 |
| 59. | The poet as healer | 540 |
| Abbreviations | 545 | |
| References | 550 | |
| Indexes of names and subjects | 577 | |
| Index of passages | 586 | |
| Index of words | 601 |
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
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Mellisa A Bailey
reviewed How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics on July 10, 2020
How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics
Often engaging, never convincing.
Watkins' premise is that it's possible to use the comparative method to reconstruct specific formulaic constructions, metrical styles, and other figures of poetic speech of Proto-Indo-European, and it's important not to let the book's mountain of (variably relevant, variably credible) philological trivia and more than occasional deliberate obscurantism hypnotise you into not noticing that this premise is false. The thing about the comparative method in linguistics isn't just that it lets us take two words in two related languages and let us reconstruct a common proto-form that we can automatically date to the time they were one language; it's that in reconstructing the proto-language it lets us construct a set of rules by which we can confidently distinguish true cognates from borrowings (and have a rough impression for when they were borrowed)'something that isn't possible even in principle when it comes to any aspect of poetics.
Obviously when dealing with significant parallels in substantial bodies of work across relatively shallow time depths, it's usually possible to say something sensible about them, but Watkins spends more time spuriously projecting trivial two-word fragments (like the overexposed κλÎος ἄφθιτον) across thousands of years, and when he does try to apply his method to something more significant'"the" titular dragon-slaying myth'the best he can do is to come up with hypergeneric formulas ("HERO SLAY ADVERSARY") which, for all their insipid vacuity, don't even fit the evidence properly and require endless variation.
Did (to focus on a specific) the Proto-Indo-Europeans have a dragon-slaying myth? Probably; almost everyone did, Indo-European or not. Are literally any of the details recoverable using Watkins' methods? Clearly not.
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