Reading Homer's Iliad
Kostas Myrsiades (Author)
9781684484485
Paperback / softback, published 11 November 2022
476 pages, 5 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm, 0.485 kg
"This book will likely find a wide audience of readers looking to read the Iliad for the first time or to become more intimate with its depths. Myrsiades brings a lifetime of reading and teaching Homer to the task of initiating new audiences to the Iliad."
— Joel Christensen, co-author of Homer: A Beginner's Guide
"An in-depth and engaging overview for students and scholars seeking a deeper understanding of the Iliad's story. The many thoughtful insights into tradition-based narrative patterns reveal an author who possesses an intimate and long-lived relationship with the epic."
— Andrew Porter, author of Agamemnon, the Pathetic Despot: Reading Characterization in Homer
"A clear and insightful commentary on the Iliad. Close attention to ancient Greek terms is joined to generously humane interpretation. New and returning readers of the Homeric epic will profit from this meticulously detailed and thematically comprehensive work."
— Jonathan S. Burgess, author of Homer
We still read Homer's epic the Iliad two-and-one-half millennia since its emergence for the questions it poses and the answers it provides for our age, as viable today as they were in Homer's own times. What is worth dying for? What is the meaning of honor and fame? What are the consequences of intense emotion and violence? What does recognition of one's mortality teach? We also turn to Homer's Iliad in the twenty-first century for the poet's preoccupation with the essence of human life. His emphasis on human understanding of mortality, his celebration of the human mind, and his focus on human striving after consciousness and identity has led audiences to this epic generation after generation. This study is a book-by-book commentary on the epic's 24 parts, meant to inform students new to the work. Endnotes clarify and elaborate on myths that Homer leaves unfinished, explain terms and phrases, and provide background information. The volume concludes with a general bibliography of work on the Iliad, in addition to bibliographies accompanying each book's commentary.
List of Illustrations
Introduction: The Poem, the Poet, and the Myth
1 Achilles' Wrath Exposed: Il. 1 (Days One to Twenty-One)
Book 1
2 The First Battle: Il. 2–7 (Days Twenty-Two to Twenty-Four)
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
Book 7
3 The Second Battle: Il. 8–10 (Day Twenty-Five)
Book 8
Book 9
Book 10
4 The Third Battle: Il. 11–18 (Day Twenty-Six)
Book 11
Book 12
Book 13
Book 14
Book 15
Book 16
Book 17
Book 18
5 The Fourth Battle: Il. 19–23 (Day Twenty-Seven)
Book 19
Book 20
Book 21
Book 22
Book 23
6 Achilles' Wrath Concluded: Il. 24 (Days Twenty-Eight to Fifty-Three)
Book 24
Appendix A: Days Covered by the Iliad Narrative
Appendix B: Character Names in the Iliad
Appendix C: Place-Names in the Iliad
Appendix D: Greek Terms Cited
Acknowledgments
Notes
General Bibliography
Index
