Iliad scholarship Flashcards
(30 cards)
Jenkyns on heroes
‘That’s what heroes do, they fight’
Jenkyns on shame
‘It’s the shame culture that makes the poem so tragic’
Jenkyns on Achilles (x2)
Achilles does not feel remorse, repentance or guilt
Achilles ‘is notably different from anyone else in the poem’
Jenkyns on women
‘Women in the poem are performers of particular roles’
Jenkyns on the gods
‘The frivolity of the gods is important to the tragic view of the poem’
Hauser on women (x2)
‘Women are seen as prizes, as objects’
Women are ‘complex and interesting characters who demonstrate their own agency’
Silk on characterisation
‘Character is conceived as static’ and there is ‘no capacity for development’
Silk on the gods
‘The gods are central to the poem’
Schein on Achilles and hector
‘Hector is presented as quintessentially social and human, while Achilles is inhumanely isolated and daemonic in his greatness’
Higgins on menis
‘The subject of the poem is menis, fury’
Higgins on young fighters in war
The Iliad ‘tells us that war is both the bringer of renown to its young fighters and the destroyer of their lives’
Higgins on war
‘Most of all, it tells us about the frightful losses of war’
Higgins on Achilles
Achilles ‘sees the war with an enhanced perspective’
Higgins on the Trojans
‘Trojans … provide the most obvious focus for the fragility of civilian life’
Higgins on fragility of life
‘Trojans … provide the most obvious focus for the fragility of civilian life’
Higgins on the gods
The Iliad ‘is made all the bleaker by its divine characters’
Higgins on loss and death
‘The Iliad is a cavalcade of loss, an endless parade of men summoned briefly to life only to be consigned to death’
Snider
‘The Iliad is a series of reconciliations’
Edwards
‘The gods are omnipresent’
Farron (x2)
‘Hector is the most sympathetic and interesting character in the Iliad’
‘Hector is by nature a peaceful, home-loving, gentle, family man who is trapped by circumstances into the role of the heroic defender of Troy’
Pratt on parents and children (x2)
‘The theme of parents and children is integral’
‘The overall ethos of the Iliad is a parental one’
Pratt on Hector
‘Devoted to the care of others’
Arieti on Achilles and shame
Achilles ‘rejects the entire ‘shame-culture’’
Arieti on Achilles accepting death
‘In his deliberate acceptance of death, not its risk but its certainty, he acts like no other man in Homer’
