Iliad Scholarship Flashcards
Eliot on Achilles
“superhuman adolescent”
Jones on Achilles’ transformation
(book 23, games)
“from anger… to generous… running his own show – transformed”
Nagy on what Achilles becomes
“ritual substitute for Patroclus”
Vandiver on Achilles at end of poem
“Achilles finally accepts Patroclus’ death – and the human condition”
Jones on Achilles’ demands
“absolute in his demands on himself and others… no other way out except through the intervention of the gods”
Reeve on Achilles’ divinity
“all the qualities in Achilles that initially strike us as bestial are qualities intended to reveal how much like a god, how transcendently excellent he really is”
Jenkyns on Achilles and blame
Achilles doesn’t use the language of fault, he tends to blame fate
Jenkyns on what stops Achilles from fighting
“heroic imperative” stops Achilles from going out to fight in book 9
Vandiver on Achilles’ speech
(bk 9)
“Achilles’ speech [in book 9] seems to undercut the entire basis of his society and the warrior culture”
Jones on Homer forgetting about Achilles
Homer has been accused of “retarding the plot” - he forgets about Achilles for much of the epic
Kershaw on why Achilles is angry
“his timē… honour that is his entire raison d’etre, has been undermined”
Kershaw on Achilles as a team player
“individual stardom often conflicts with the interests of the team”
Jones on the reason for Achilles’ anger
“emotional hurt, own feelings of humiliation”
Kershaw on Achilles after Patroclus’ death
“he imposes his own death sentence… because he feels responsible for Patroclus’ death”
Sowerby on Achilles and friendship
“Achilles has no regard for the obligations of friendship”
Kershaw on the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus
“this is military male-bonding, not homoerotic passion”
Jenkyns on Achilles’ wrath
“we mustn’t think of the wrath of Achilles as being a fit of filthy temper”
Redfield on Hector
The Iliad is the “tragedy of Hector”
Graziosi on the symbolism of Hector’s death
The death of Hector comes to symbolise the fall of Troy
Graziosi on the audience’s sympathy for Hector
audience can sympathise with Hector - we are shown how he reacts to those closest with him
Graziosi on Hector and death
“we see what it means to lose hope and finally face death”
Graziosi on Hector and Andromache
“a good couple is a rare thing”
Jenkyns on Hector and society
“he’s embedded in ordinary society”
Jenkyns on why Hector needs to be a bit average
“what we see is internal mental conflict and its resolution… requires the character to have a certain ordinariness about him”
Graziosi on why the Iliad ends the way it does
“the Iliad ends with the funeral of Hector, which in a way stands for the end and the fall of the whole city”
Dunn on the Gods
“the gods almost see the war as a chess game”
Sheppard on the gods’ quarrels
“amusing, graceful, irreverent and infinitely less important”
Jenkyns on the gods’ lack of care
“we feel how little the gods care for even… the men they value the most”
Jenkyns on the Homeric Conception
The Homeric Conception – that the gods are superficial and humans are really deep
Jenkyns on the difference between gods and men
“men are unhappy and the gods are happy”
Silk on the character development of humans
“they seem to show no capacity for development: character is concieved as static”
Jenkyns on the end of the poem
“human nature has never seemed more magnificent”
Graziosi on general humanity
“there is no unknown soldier in Homer. Everyone’s named”
Jones on Zeus and Fate
“It is Zeus who holds the balance of life and death in the strife. It is from him that victory comes”
Jones on divine intervention
“Homer is perfectly capable of showing people making up their own minds without divine intervention”
Van Nortwick on portrayal of war
“a melancholy music that pervades the entire poem… a man facing his own death… if we are tempted to call the Iliad a celebration of war, these little biographies say otherwise”
Finley on portrayal of war
“the poet and his audience lingered lovingly over every act of slaughter”
Allan on portrayal of war
“Homer presents the complexity of war, not a one-dimensional and lazy depiction of it”
Vandiver on homeric society
Homeric Society was a ‘shame culture’ - your own self-perception is based on what others think of you
Jenkyns on Shame Culture
Shame culture creates a tragic paradox in the poem
(hector going out to fight)
M. Davies on the killing of Dolon
“cowardly and treacherous murder”
Jones on the killing of Dolon
“crude and unheroic”
Edwards on the killing of Dolon
“not unhomeric”
Selby on Xenia
(vulnerability of)
Xenia “was vulnerable to abuse and change”
Selby on Xenia
(civilisation)
“a way of gauging the level of civilisation of a community”
Sowerby on Xenia
“even under the stress of war, the civilised decencies of the heroic world are generally maintained”
Hauser on Helen
Helen is an “anti-woman – a woman men are afraid of”
Greenwood on the tradition of Helen
“voyeuristic tradition of Helen of Troy”
Kershaw on women
“there is a sensitive awareness of the domestic perspective”
Hauser on gender roles
“man are the speakers, women are the passive ones who go home and do their weaving”
Hauser on men/women’s world
“this is a very firmly man’s world, and women have no place in it”
Hauser on how women are presented
“women are very much conceptualised as objects”
Hauser on the importance of women
“these are stories that begin because of women”
Hauser on Helen and Homer
“Helen, the weaver, is also being connected to Homer, the poet, and she’s telling a story of war”
Graziosi on Andromache
“Andromache is imagined as a monument of future glory to the dead Hector”
Jones on the end of the poem
“gratifying sense of resolution”
Minchin on direct speech
“45% of the Iliad is direct speech, we realise the value he set upon this mode of storytelling”
Foley on performance
“took shape not as silent text but as audible story performance”
Foley on how to appreciate the epic
Epics “cannot be fully cherished without taking [their oral] heritage into account”
Jenkyns on book 9
Can be seen as a moral tragedy pivoting on Book 9
E.T. Owen on the most important speech in the Iliad
Achilles’ in book 9
Jenkyns on the climax of the poem
seems like it should be the killing of Hector
Morrison on visualisation
Helping the audience to visualise the scenes at Troy is integral to the Iliad; perhaps this is what has made it endure
Jones on similes
Similes give “contemporary vividness… to the homeric past”
Dunn on epithets
“building blocks of the epic”
Jenkyns on major characters
Most major characters (like Odysseus and Ajax) are “entirely inessential to the plot”
Jenkyns on Phoenix
Phoenix is essential – he was clearly added as an afterthought (we can see in the greek plurals) and so he shows the childlike side to Achilles
Jenkyns on book 23
“only part of the poem which becomes social comedy”
Kershaw on Homeric excellence
“‘excellence’ depends on birth, wealth, power and position”
Thorpe on heroes
“knowing that his life might end at anytime, the hero tried to create something permanent and lasting”
Owen on Achilles’ acquiesance to Agamemnon
Because Athena made him acquiese, his impression isn’t tainted.
Sowerby on the Homeric man
“neither the reward of heaven nor the pains of hell… Homeric man seeks to make the most of his present existence”
Sowerby on the portrayal of war
“the battles are whole hearted and there is exhilaration in the fighting”
Snider on reconciliation
“the Iliad is a series of reconciliations”
Eberhard on fate
“Fate must occur so that the narrative moves towards a resolution.”
Sowerby on gods and time
time is important for gods too; Agamemnon insults Apollo’s honour (his time) when he takes Chryseis
Reinhardt on the gods
The Gods exhibit “sublime triviality”
Kershaw on the book 6 moment between Andromache and Hector
“an incredibly powerful moment… clearly not concerned with male dominance”
Gaca on the enslavement of women and girls
“the girls and women are captured for for the purpose of sexual and other exploitation”
Sowerby on women
“women… are treated with attention, consideration and respect”
Peter Jones on Hector
“pure patriot”
Leaf on Hector
“far nobler than Achilles”
Farron on Briseis
her speech in Book 19 “imprints in the audience’s mind that Briseis’ feelings are real and her life is truly tragic”
Whitmore on Thersites
he is an “incarnation of the ugly truth”
Haubold on Hector
Hector finds human warmth in his death by those who will remember him through his kleos.
John Scott on Hector
Hector is the moral hero of the poem
Lattimore on Hector
He captures the affection of the modern reader more than Achilles does
Fagles on Achilles’ killing of Hector
“when Achilles destroys Hector in revenge he must destroy himself as well, his flashing mirror-image embodied in his victim”
(because Hector was wearing Achilles’ own armour)
Knox on Achilles’ rage
“the rage of Achilles… is the theme of the poem, the mainspring of the plot”
Knox on the poem’s regular rhythm
“presenting in a rhythmic microcosm the wandering course to a fixed end which is the pattern of the rage of Achilles”
Knox on book 23
An older form of a verb “would indicate that the account of the funeral games of Patroclus is one of the oldest parts of the poem”
Knox on epithets
“the choice of the epithet is dictated by the meter”
Knox on Homer’s battles
“clearly a creation of the epic muse rather than a representation of actual battle conditions”
Knox on death
“death is the end: Homer offers no comforting vision of life beyond the grave”
Knox on Homeric Heroes
“it is for the body, not the soul, that the Homeric heroes feel concern”
Knox on the balance of joy and violence
“the victor’s joy of battle and the hideous suffering of the victim are equally balanced”
Knox on Troy
“the literary prototype of all Greek cities”
Knox on Hector (burden)
” on him falls the whole burden of the war”
Knox on Hector (relationships)
“he is a man who appears most himself in his relationship with others”
Knox on Achilles’ choice
“he has chosen glory and death. the natural consequence of that choice is a fierce devotion to the glory which he has preferred to a long life”
Knox on books 20 and 21
“the violence of books 20 and 21 make what has gone before seem child’s play”
Knox on divine intervention
“there is a correlation between divine intervention and independent human action”
Knox on fate
“sometimes the possibility is raised that what is fated will actually be annulled by divine will - or even by humans”
Knox on gods and men
“gods and men, for Homer, are very much alike”
Knox on the wrath of the goddesses
“Hell hath no fury like a goddess scorned”
Knox on divine intervention (reasons)
“the reasons for divine intervention are trivial, human”
Knox on the nature of gods
“imagined in the likeness of man… but magnified in scale”
Knox on the fighting of the gods
“no reaction other than laughter seems possible”
Knox on the gods and death
“the gods are exempt from the ultimate consequence of action… they will survive”
Knox on the battlefield and gods
“only men can have true dignity on the battlefield; the presence of gods there is an impertinence”
Knox on gods and power
“the Homeric god recognises no authority outside itself - except superior force”
Knox on Helen
“Helen has nothing without her beauty… without Aphrodite she would be nothing”
Knox on Achilles in bk 23
“a vision of what Achilles might have been like in peace”
Knox on Achilles in bk 24
When he meets Priam, he moves from godlike to human
Knox on the end of the poem
“we are left with a sense of waste”
