This study of the gooi or personal laments in Homer's Iliad once and for all articulates the poetic techniques regulating this type of speech. Going beyond the tendency to view lament as a repetitive and group-based activity, this work shows instead the primacy of the goos, a sub-genre which the Iliad has "produced" by absorbing the funerary genre of lament. Oral theory, narratology, semiotics, rhetorical analysis are deftly applied to explore the ways personal laments develop principal epic themes and unravel narrative threads weaving the thematical texture of the entire Iliad (and beyond): the wrath of Achilles, the deaths of Patroclus and Hector, the grief of Achilles and his future death, the foreshadowing of Troy's destruction.
Winner of the Annual Award in Classics (2007) of the Academy of Athens.
Author(s): Christos Tsagalis
Series: Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 70
Edition: ebook
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Year: 2012
Language: English
Pages: 240
Frontmatter......Page 1
Acknowledgements......Page 5
Contents......Page 7
1. Reading Iliadic Lament......Page 11
2. The Typology of the Iliadic Γόοι......Page 37
3. Introductory and Closing Formulas......Page 63
4. Distance, Separation and Mors Immatura: Common Motifs in the Iliadic Personal Laments......Page 85
5. Intratextual Readings......Page 119
Conclusion......Page 176
APPENDIX I. Privileged and Unprivileged Dead......Page 181
APPENDIX II. Short obituaries in the Iliad......Page 189
Bibliography......Page 203
Indexes......Page 229
