Components of the epic |
memory and recollection ~ temporality | |
the monument (including the writing of epic itself) |
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contexts of profound cultural change |
located bodies – one the heroic body |
Hades |
how are the shades of the dead described in this place? | |||
family | |||
where they came from | |||
what they did or what happened to them | |||
Achilles rejoices in the deeds of his son | |||
(the epic itself announces its topic of the deeds of men and gods 1.338) | |||
real death is silence, obscurity, amnesia |
Phaeacia |
Odysseus confronts his own fame | |
his glorious deeds immortalized in song | |
in an aristocratic household where he reveals his family and lineage | |
proves himself in the games | |
and receives the goods appropriate to his rank | |
to enable his return home |
the monsters |
the Cyclops - wholly asocial | |
the Sirens – the duplicity of language (and women) | |
Scylla and Charybdis – wholly ‘other’, consuming the self without grace or burial | |
Calypso – divine but holding only the promise of being alone and forgotten | |
Proteos (Book 4) | |
these are the means also by which the hero becomes himself | |
the hero |
agathos – head of the household/oikos | |
a man of arete – position, wealth, excellence, the privilege of leisure | |
a man of time – honor and the wealth owing to position, the goods possessed | |
a man of philoi – those people and things held dear | |
the agon |
good intentions are irrelevant to the loser or the dead | |
the compensation for the agathos fighting in the front rank is kudos – success and its renown | |
and kleos – fame | |
the culture of the agathos is a public one of results and fame or shame – hero and actions are identical | |
the heroic body what is its location? |
outside itself | |
to be found in what others say | |
confronting otherness and death | |
‘in a beautiful death excellence no longer has to be measured indefinitely against others and keep proving itself in confrontation; it is realized at one stroke and forever in the exploit that puts an end to the life of the hero’ Vernant | |
Slide 9 |