From Classical to Contemporary

HUM 2051: Civilization IFall 2012

Dr. PerdigaoSeptember 5-7, 2012

Narrative Arcs• Shift from self-love of Achilles to love for another returns him

to battle

• Moment of contact at end, when Achilles takes Priam’s hand

• Empathy, pity as he gives the body back

• Shift from rage: pity as story cycle, narrative arc

• After the story—Trojan horse, gods presented as gift—“beware of Greeks bearing gifts”—origins of phrase

Inheritance and Tradition• The Iliad propagates other stories—inheritance of tradition

• When war is over, Odysseus heads to Ithaca, takes 10 years, is gone for 20

• Aeneas loses his wife and child, escapes with small band of Trojans, goes to Italy, sets up Rome to replace Greek center

• Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia, Clytaemnestra’s affair, leads to tragedy within Aeschylus’ Oresteia and individual play Agamemnon

• Greek world view that strife is always there (even the characters refer to it)—returns us to the origins in the frame story of the wedding and Eris’ role

Structure and Meaning• Timé, arêté as the goal, immortality through memory:

Hector’s speech (181, 325): “My fate is here, / But I will not perish without some great deed / That future generations will remember.”

• Here, contrast between Achilles (ultimate individual) and Hector (name-holder, household), as the social unit, larger society rather than mere individualism. Like the Olympic games in 776 BCE represent the relationship between the individual and the collective, a collective Greek identity

• Conflict:Individuals: wrath/pitySocial: war/peaceHumanity: creativity/destruction

Developing Characters• Achilles is chastened by pity and changes while the gods

cannot grow

• Story within the story is one of growth

• Hector is always depicted against background of civilized life

• Achilles represents uncertainty, chaos

• Poem ultimately ends with the beauty of reconciliation, by representing the two poles of the human condition (wrath/pity, war/peace, creativity/destruction)

• Achilles is forced back into human community

The Text within the Text• Shield’s representation of this duality, these binary oppositions

(170, 515)

• Ekphrasis=description of physical work of art in verbal art

• Achilles’ shield as microcosmic representation of entire poem

• Shield’s key images—representation of city at peace, rituals of marriage, but then murder breaks peaceful world of institution, so the city has a court, for balance, seen with justice’s scales

• Though there is violence, there are means to judicate

• Then wartime, another story of battle, plunder, crisis

• The whole world—sea and sky—while within is peace and war, violence within peace

• Yet there are means to control, with Eris recognized

• Another image of the poem as a frame for life and experience

Sites for Revision• Helen’s comments (127, 372): “Brother-in-law / Of a scheming,

cold-blooded bitch. . . You bear such a burden / For my wanton ways and Paris’ witlessness. / Zeus has placed this evil fate on us so that / In time to come poets will sing of us.”

• Andromache’s plea, Hector’s response (as foundations for Lysistrata) (129, 426): “Don’t make your child an orphan, your wife a widow.”

• Achilles’ wish (161): “I wish all strife would stop, among gods / And among me, and anger too.”

• Thetis repeats Achilles’ history (169, 470)

• Andromache’s final words (204, 780): “You have died young, husband, and left me / A widow in the halls. Our son is still an infant, / Doomed when we bore him. I do not think / He will ever reach manhood. No, this city / Will topple and fall first. You were its savoir, / And now you are lost.”