Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society
Oath-Making Rituals in the Iliad

This book focuses on oath-making narratives in the Iliad, through which it articulates a theory of ritualized violence.

Margo Kitts (Author)

9780521855297, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 November 2005

258 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.48 kg

"Margo Kitt offers scholars a number of intriguing new views on well-known pieces of poetic material...anyone interested in studying religious rituals-actual or imagined-will profit intellectually from observing Iliadic oath sacrifices through Kitt's wide-ranging and often keen-sighted eyes."
Shubha Pathak, The Journal of Religion

In Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society, Margo Kitts focuses on oath-making narratives found in the Iliad through which she articulates a theory of ritualized violence. She analyzes ritual paradigms, metaphors, fictions, and poetic registers as oath-making principles, which she then traces through Homeric references and texts from the ancient New East. Discussing ritual features that are common to acts of religious violence throughout the world, Kitts makes use of the theory of ritual performance as communication.

Introduction: why another treatment of Greek sacrifice?
1. Epics, rituals, and rituals in epic: methodological considerations
2. Premises and principles of oath-making in the Iliad
3. Ritual scenes and epic themes of oath-sacrifice
4. Homeric battlefield theophanies, in light of the ancient Near East
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Religion & beliefs [HR], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]