Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad

ISBN-13: 9780521806602 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 250 str.

City University of New Yo Donna F. Wilson (Brooklyn College

Opis

Wilson examines the nature of compensation--ransom and revenge--in the liad, offering a fundamentally new reading of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles. She presents a detailed anthropology of compensation in Homer, located in the wider context of agonistic exchange, to demonstrate how the struggle over definitions is a central feature of elite competition for status in the zero-sum and fluid ranking system of Homeric society. The study thus asserts the integral role of compensation in the traditional, cultural and poetic matrix of this foundational epic.

Recenzje

'… Donna Wilson succeeds brilliantly in untangling an interpretive knot that has bound up the exegesis of the Iliad for centuries. … [She] provides a sensitive and sophisticated analysis of the cultural poetics of compensation, showing that the crucial terms … are not major structuring concepts with the Iliad, but within Greek society, and not just static concepts, but ones essentially open to constant rhetorically charged renegotiation.' Richard Martin, Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor of Classics, Stanford University

Spis treści

Preface and acknowledgements; Introduction: compensation and heroic identity; 1. Ransom and revenge: poetics and politics of compensation; 2. Agamemnon and Chryses: between king and father; 3. The quarrel: men who would be king; 4. The embassy to Achilleus: in the name of the father; 5. Achilleus and Priam: between king and father; 6. Unlimited poine: poetry as practice; Appendices; Notes; Abbreviations; References; Index of Homeric passages; General index.