Women of Substance in Homeric Epic

Women of Substance in Homeric Epic PDF

Author: Lilah Grace Canevaro

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-13

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0192560808

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Women in Greek epic are treated as objects, as commodities to be exchanged in marriage or as the spoils of warfare. However, women in Homeric epic also use objects to negotiate their own agency, subverting the male viewpoint by utilizing on their own terms the very form they themselves are thought by men to embody. Such female objects can transcend their physical limitations and be both symbolically significant and powerfully characterizing. They can be tools of recognition and identification. They can pause narrative and be used agonistically. They can send messages and be vessels for memory. Women of Substance in Homeric Epic offers a new and insightful approach to the Iliad and Odyssey, bringing together Gender Theory and the burgeoning field of New Materialisms, new to classical studies, and thereby combining an approach predicated on the idea of the woman as object with one which questions the very distinction between subject and object. This productive tension leads us to decentre the male subject and to put centre stage not only the woman as object but also the agency of women and objects. The volume comes at a turning point in the gendering of Homeric studies, with the publication of the first English translations by women of the Iliad in 2015 and the Odyssey in 2017, by Caroline Alexander and Emily Wilson respectively. It makes a significant contribution to scholarship by demonstrating that women in Homeric epic are not only objectified, but are also well-versed users of objects; this is something that Homer portrays clearly, that Odysseus understands, but that has often escaped many other men, from Odysseus' alter-ego Aethon in Odyssey 19 to modern experts on Homeric epic.

Women of Substance in Homeric Epic

Women of Substance in Homeric Epic PDF

Author: Lilah Grace Canevaro

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-04

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0192560794

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Women in Greek epic are treated as objects, as commodities to be exchanged in marriage or as the spoils of warfare. However, women in Homeric epic also use objects to negotiate their own agency, subverting the male viewpoint by utilizing on their own terms the very form they themselves are thought by men to embody. Such female objects can transcend their physical limitations and be both symbolically significant and powerfully characterizing. They can be tools of recognition and identification. They can pause narrative and be used agonistically. They can send messages and be vessels for memory. Women of Substance in Homeric Epic offers a new and insightful approach to the Iliad and Odyssey, bringing together Gender Theory and the burgeoning field of New Materialisms, new to classical studies, and thereby combining an approach predicated on the idea of the woman as object with one which questions the very distinction between subject and object. This productive tension leads us to decentre the male subject and to put centre stage not only the woman as object but also the agency of women and objects. The volume comes at a turning point in the gendering of Homeric studies, with the publication of the first English translations by women of the Iliad in 2015 and the Odyssey in 2017, by Caroline Alexander and Emily Wilson respectively. It makes a significant contribution to scholarship by demonstrating that women in Homeric epic are not only objectified, but are also well-versed users of objects; this is something that Homer portrays clearly, that Odysseus understands, but that has often escaped many other men, from Odysseus' alter-ego Aethon in Odyssey 19 to modern experts on Homeric epic.

Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad

Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad PDF

Author: Jonathan L. Ready

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-07-09

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0192642626

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The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad investigates each of the Iliad's twenty-four books, proceeding in order from book 1 to book 24 and devoting one chapter to each one. Contributors summarize the plot of a book and then explore its themes and poetics, providing both close readings of individual passages and synthetic reviews of current scholarship. This format allows readers to study the poem in the same manner in which they read it: book by book. Differing from other introductions to the Iliad that comprise chapters on specific topics and themes, the volume offers accessible and actionable discussions of concepts pertinent to each book of the poem. Differing from other introductory volumes that are written by a single author, this volume allows for a polyphony of critical voices and showcases the diversity of approaches to the Iliad. Finally, differing from commentaries keyed to the Greek text, this volume is completely accessible to those who do not read Homeric Greek. These features make the volume an essential resource for those studying the Iliad in translation and in the original Greek, for those in classical studies and in other disciplines, and for teachers and students, both those at the undergraduate level and those at the graduate level.

Homer's Iliad and the Problem of Force

Homer's Iliad and the Problem of Force PDF

Author: Charles H. Stocking

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-04-05

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 019267742X

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The topic of force has long remained a problem of interpretation for readers of Homer's Iliad, ever since Simone Weil famously proclaimed it as the poem's main subject. This book seeks to address that problem through a full-scale treatment of the language of force in the Iliad from both philological and philosophical perspectives. Each chapter explores the different types of Iliadic force in combination with the reception of the Iliad in the French intellectual tradition. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the different terms for force in the Iliad give expression to distinct relations between self and "other." At the same time, this book reveals how the Iliad as a whole undermines the very relations of force which characters within the poem seek to establish. Ultimately, this study of force in the Iliad offers an occasion to reconsider human subjectivity in Homeric poetry.

Homer's Daughters

Homer's Daughters PDF

Author: Fiona Cox

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-10-03

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0192523538

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This collection of essays examines the various ways in which the Homeric epics have been responded to, reworked, and rewritten by women writers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Beginning in 1914 with the First World War, it charts this understudied strand of the history of Homeric reception over the subsequent century up to the present day, analysing the extraordinary responses both to the Odyssey and to the Iliad by women from around the world. The backgrounds of these authors and the genres they employ - memoir, poetry, children's literature, rap, novels - testify not only to the plasticity of Homeric epic, but also to the widening social classes to whom Homer appeals, and it is unsurprising to see the myriad ways in which women writers across the globe have played their part in the story of Homer's afterlife. From surrealism to successive waves of feminism to creative futures, Homer's footprint can be seen in a multitude of different literary and political movements, and the essays in this volume bring an array of critical approaches to bear on the work of authors ranging from H.D. and Simone Weil to Christa Wolf, Margaret Atwood, and Kate Tempest. Students and scholars of not only classics, but also translation studies, comparative literature, and women's writing will find much to interest them, while the volume's concluding reflections by Emily Wilson on her new translation of the Odyssey are an apt reminder to all of just how open a text can be, and of how great a difference can be made by a woman's voice.

The Homeric Centos

The Homeric Centos PDF

Author: Anna Lefteratou

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-07-18

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0197666558

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The Homeric Centos, a poem that is Homeric in style and biblical in theme, is a dramatic illustration of the creative cultural and religious dialogue between Classical Antiquity and Christianity taking place in the Roman Empire during the fifth century CE. The text is attributed to Eudocia, empress and poet, who died in exile in the Holy Land ca. 460. With lines drawn verbatim from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the poem begins with the Creation and Fall and ends with Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension. In this blend of Homeric style and Christian themes, there are also echoes of Classical and classicising literature, stretching from Homer and drama to imperial literature. Equally prominent are echoes of earlier Christian canonical and apocryphal works, verse models, and theological works. In The Homeric Centos: Homer and the Bible Interwoven, Anna Lefteratou analyzes the double inspiration of the poem by both classical and Christian traditions. This book explores the works relationship with the cultural milieu of the fifth century CE and offers in-depth analysis of the scenes of Creation and Fall, and Jesus' Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. This book exposes the work's debt to centuries of Homeric reception and interpretation as well as Christian literature and exegesis, and places it at the crossroads of Christian and pagan literary traditions.

Homer

Homer PDF

Author: Barbara Graziosi

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 0199589941

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The Iliad and the Odyssey are the cornerstones of Western literature, inspiring artists, writers, philosophers, musicians, playwrights, and film-makers throughout history. Barbara Graziosi introduces Homer's key works and discusses the main literary, historical, and archaeological issues at the heart of Homeric studies.

Future Fame in the Iliad

Future Fame in the Iliad PDF

Author: Yukai Li

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-02-10

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1350239224

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When Homeric heroes think about the meaning of their actions, they expect this to take the form of kleos, 'fame', in a future song. This volume explores the consequences of this mode of thinking in the Iliad in particular, and argues that the form of kleos and the interposition of a gap of time between event and meaning produces widespread effects, not only for the thought and psyche of the heroes, but also for the nature of poetry and Homeric scholarship. Is epic time continuous, perpetuating the fame of the heroes in the flow of poetic tradition, or does a gap intervene to put into doubt the self-identity of meaning and the possibility of memory? This question connects the poetic logic of fame for the heroes and singers of epic to the implicit temporalities of Homeric studies. Alongside the analysis of literary figures from the Iliad, such as narrative, objects and similes, this volume reads modern scholarship on Homer – including oral theory, neoanalysis and traditional referentiality – as forms of reception which have produced distinct responses to the temporality of ancient epic. The participants in epic kleos – heroes, poets and scholars – encounter each other through a tradition that joins the memories and presentiments of a past that did not happen and futures that will never arrive.

New Approaches to Ancient Material Culture in the Greek & Roman World

New Approaches to Ancient Material Culture in the Greek & Roman World PDF

Author: Catherine Cooper

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-11-16

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 9004440755

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This book highlights the diversity of current methodologies in Classical Archaeology. It includes papers about archaeology and art history, museum objects and fieldwork data, texts and material culture, archaeological theory and historiography, and technical and literary analysis, across Classical Antiquity.

Livy's Women

Livy's Women PDF

Author: Peter Keegan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-03-08

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1351373358

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Livy’s Women explores the profound questions arising from the presence of women of influence and power in the socio-political canvas of one of the most important histories of Rome and the Roman people, Ab Urbe Condita (From the Foundation of the City). This theoretically informed study of Livy’s monumental narrative charts the fascinating links between episodes containing references to women in prominent roles and the historian’s treatment of Rome’s evolutionary foundation story. Explicitly gendered in relation to the socio-cultural contexts informing the narrative, the author’s background, the literary landscape of Livy's Rome, and the subsequent historiographical commentary, this volume offers a comprehensive, coherent and contextualised overview of all episodes in Ab Urbe Condita relating to women as agents of historical change. As well as proving invaluable insights into socio-cultural history for Classicists, Livy’s Women will also be of interest to instructors, researchers, and students of female representation in history in general.