Iliad, books 2-3

Reminder: Van Nortwick lecture changed to 7:00 next Wednesday (not 7:30, as listed on the syllabus)

Continuing our "literary" critical stance: how this is read by a moderately informed modern audience?

Book 2

Agamemnon has a dream and decides to "test" the army

What does the reaction of the army tell us? what does this episode tell us about Agamemnon?

The Thersites Episode

Who is Thersites? Why is he the "ugliest man who ever came to Troy?" What about his speech-- in what ways does it reflect earlier action? What inference can we draw from this bizarre episode?

The "Catalogue of Ships"

Invocation of the Muses: what is the effect? Why the catalogue here-- what does it accomplish?

Book 3

At the beginning of book 3 the two armies have marched out and all is ready for a might conflict; but instead (1) a duel is proposed between the two principals, Menelaus and Paris; (2) we shift to Troy and see Helen identifying for Priam the principal Greek warriors; (3) Paris, defeated in the duel, is whisked away by Aphrodite and Helen, after some complaints, sleeps with him

Logically absurd-- in all common sense, these events should have taken place long before this. Why are they introduced here?

What do we learn about the personalities of Paris, Helen?

The Anthropological Approach

1. Shame culture vs. Guilt culture:

Shame culture: from this viewpoint, a man's worth --whether the man himself is worthy or unworthy, whether an action is good or bad -- is determined by the objective consequences in the community. A man is worthy if his position in society, and esp. his material position (wealth, property, elite kinship, and other objective items) signals his worth. Inner conscience, and decisions of good and evil in the Christian sense do not come into play

Guilt culture (ours): actions are delimited by inner conscience, and the worth of a man can be felt to be independent of his status in the community

2. Ranked, or chiefdom, societies:

Donlan: "The elites have a monopoly on the positions of authority but cannot withhold access to the means of subsistence"

Competitive gift-giving: potlash societies

3. Importance of timê, geras in archaic Greek society

4. Donlan makes strongly the point that the values and interactions within the poem must match those of the audience: But why must this be so?

Iliad as a poem stemming from an oral tradition

Agamemnon and Achilles: "duelling with gifts"

To seize a prize of honor, a geras, is an "almost unthinkable insult, an act of negative reciprocity"

"Agamemnon, in the space of 300 lines, has committed three highly irregular acts, censured by everyone: mistreatment of a suppliant, compounded by impiety towards the god; gross insult against the leading Achaean warrior; refusal to compromise as established custom demands."

King who "feeds on his people"

Student "talking points"