Auerbach and the Field of Access: A Clarification

This note clarifies the relation between the theory of perceptual misalignment, the field of access, Auerbach’s account of Homeric exteriority, oral-formulaic theory, and philological approaches to Homeric textuality. It argues that the field of access does not reject Auerbach, replace Parry-Lord, or supersede philology, but asks a narrower analytic question: how mediated forms make presence available without grounding that presence in sovereign interiority or a single stable source.