Homer and His Iliad
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A “compelling and impressive” (Sunday Times) reassessment of the Iliad, uncovering how the poem was written and why it remains enduringly powerful
The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure?
Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, drawing on a lifelong love and engagement with the poem. He argues for a place, a date, and a method for its composition—subjects of ongoing controversy—combining the detailed expertise of a historian with a poetic reader’s sensitivity. Lane Fox considers hallmarks of the poem; its values, implicit and explicit; its characters; its women; its gods; and even its horses.
Thousands of readers turn to the Iliad every year. Drawing on fifty years of reading and research, Lane Fox offers us a breathtaking tour of this magnificent text, revealing why the poem has endured for ages.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oxford historian Lane Fox (Augustine) examines in this enlightening account the origins and the lasting impact of Homer's Iliad. Drawing on historical and archaeological evidence, he pinpoints the method and location of the poem's creation, suggesting that it was an oral narrative, with portions sung, that was dictated not long after its composition, which occurred along the Aegean Coast of Asia sometime between 750 and 740 BCE. (He zeroes in on such a precise time frame because it is bounded on the late end by the earliest appearance of lines from the poem on pottery shards, and on the early end by political and social developments which Homer seems to reference.) According to Lane Fox, the Iliad has endured because of the universal appeal of its themes, including the male heroes' fascination with kudos or fame, the divine intervention and intermittent absences of the gods, and the contrast between the glory of war and the futility of conflict. The shifting behavior of the hero, Achilles—from anger to rage to revenge and finally to pity and compassion—receives special attention. Combining a historian's meticulous methodology with a lifelong appreciation of the Iliad, Lane Fox presents a thorough reassessment of the poem and a moving interrogation of its themes of pathos, pity, and irony. It's a rewarding investigation.
