The Ethics Of Revenge And The Meanings Of The Odyssey

Author : Alexander C. Loney
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190909676
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ethics of Revenge and the Meanings of the Odyssey written by Alexander C. Loney and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-01-25 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first in-depth examination of revenge in the Odyssey. The principal revenge plot of the Odyssey --Odysseus' surprise return to Ithaca after twenty away and his vengeance on Penelope's suitors -- is the act for which he is most celebrated. This story forms the backbone of the Odyssey. But is Odysseus' triumph over the suitors as univocally celebratory as is often assumed? Does the poem contain and even suggest other, darker interpretations of Odysseus' greatest achievement? This book offers a careful analysis of several other revenge plots in the Odyssey -- those of Orestes, Poseidon, Zeus, and the suitors' relatives. It shows how these revenge stories color one another with allusions (explicit and implicit) that connect them and invite audiences to interpret them in light of one another. These stories -- especially Odysseus' revenge upon the suitors -- inevitably turn out to have multiple meanings. One plot of revenge slips into another as the offender in one story becomes a victim to be avenged in the next. As a result, Odysseus turns out to be a much more ambivalent hero than has been commonly accepted. And in the Odyssey's portrayal, revenge is an unstable foundation for a community. Revenge also ends up being a tenuous narrative structure for an epic poem, as a natural end to cycles of vengeance proves elusive. This book offers a radical new reading of the seemingly happy ending of the poem.

Author : Justin Arft
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192663607
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Arete and the Odyssey's Poetics of Interrogation written by Justin Arft and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arete and the Odyssey's Poetics of Interrogation explores how the enigmatic Phaeacian queen, Arete, is at the heart of an epic-scale "poetics of interrogation" used throughout the Odyssey to negotiate Odysseus' kleos, or epic renown. Arete's interrogation of Odysseus has been especially problematic in scholarship, but diachronic and synchronic analysis of similar interrogations across Indo-European, Orphic, and Greek epigrammatic corpora show that the "stranger's interrogation" is a formula that demands performance and negotiation of status. Within the Odyssey, this interrogation is part of an intraformular network used to generate kleos, and the queen's question initiates the longest and most complex negotiation of Odysseus' status in epic and memory. Arete's role as interrogator not only explains her strange authority and resonance with both Penelope and comparative afterlife figures, but it also establishes a gendered, agonistic tension between she and her husband, Alkinoos, that influences the structure, genre, and narratology of performances across the Phaeacian episode. This book reinterprets the Odyssey's central episode and challenges several assumptions about Nausikaa and Alkinoos' famed hospitality, even demonstrating how the Apologue is organized as a response to competing inquiries into Odysseus' fundamental status in tradition. The Odyssey ultimately navigates away from Odysseus' public reputation and roots his status in private memories, and Arete's carefully arranged interventions signal the larger process by which the Odyssey immortalizes Odysseus in poetry as a nostos hero. The queen and her question invite new applications of oral poetics that shed light on the structure, composition, and reperformance of the Odyssey.

Author : Thomas Van Nortwick
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 047202521X
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Unknown Odysseus written by Thomas Van Nortwick and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Unknown Odysseus is a study of how Homer creates two versions of his hero, one who is the triumphant protagonist of the revenge plot and another, more subversive, anonymous figure whose various personae exemplify an entirely different set of assumptions about the world through which each hero moves and about the shape and meaning of human life. Separating the two perspectives allows us to see more clearly how the poem's dual focus can begin to explain some of the notorious difficulties readers have encountered in thinking about the Odyssey. In The Unknown Odysseus, Thomas Van Nortwick offers the most complete exploration to date of the implications of Odysseus' divided nature, showing how it allows Homer to explore the riddles of human identity in a profound way that is not usually recognized by studies focusing on only one "real" hero in the narrative. This new perspective on the epic enriches the world of the poem in a way that will interest both general readers and classical scholars. ". . .an elegant and lucid critical study that is also a good introduction to the poem." ---David Quint, London Review of Books "Thomas Van Nortwick's eloquently written book will give the neophyte a clear interpretive path through the epic while reminding experienced readers why they should still care about the Odyssey's unresolved interpretive cruces. The Unknown Odysseus is not merely accessible, but a true pleasure to read." ---Lillian Doherty, University of Maryland "Contributing to an important new perspective on understanding the epic, Thomas Van Nortwick wishes to resist the dominant, even imperial narrative that tries so hard to trick, beguile, and even bully its listeners into accepting the inevitability of Odysseus' heroism." ---Victoria Pedrick, Georgetown University Thomas Van Nortwick is Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics at Oberlin College and author of Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero's Journey in Ancient Epic (1992) and Oedipus: The Meaning of a Masculine Life (1998). Jacket art: Head of Odysseus from a sculptural group representing Odysseus killing Polyphemus in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Sperlonga, Italy. Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Author : William G. Thalmann
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801434792
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Swineherd and the Bow written by William G. Thalmann and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thalmann concentrates on the representation of slaves and on the dynamics of competition and family structure in the contest of the bow to interpret the Odyssey - and, implicity, epic poetry generally - as an intervention in the conflicts that surrounded the birth of the polis.

Author : Donna F. Wilson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521806602
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad written by Donna F. Wilson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-27 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a detailed anthropology of compensation in the Iliad, with reference to the wider Homeric society.

Author : Trudy Govier
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135199094
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Forgiveness and Revenge written by Trudy Govier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-02-25 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forgiveness and Revenge is a powerful exploration of our attitudes to serious wrongdoings and a careful examination of the values that underlie our thinking about revenge and forgiveness. From adulterous spouses to terrorist factions, we are surrounded by wrongdoing, yet we rarely agree which response is appropriate. The problem of how to respond realistically and sensitively to the wrongs of the past remains a perplexing one. Trudy Govier clarifies our thinking on this subject by examining the moral and practical impact of revenge and forgiveness, both personal and political. Forgiveness and Revenge offers much-needed clarity and reason where emotions often prevail. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the ethics of attitudes to wrongdoing.

Author : Peter A. French
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Virtues of Vengeance written by Peter A. French and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the course of his study of vengeance as a moral concept, French exposes important distinctions between types of moral theories (karmic and non-karmic) and between people who are morally handicapped and those who are morally challenged. He examines concepts relevant to vengeance, such as honor, moral authority, and evil, and issues such as the rationality of revenge and proportionality in punishment."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Graham Zanker
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472084005
Total Pages : 188 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Heart of Achilles written by Graham Zanker and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the moral choices and values Homer offers in his Iliad

Author : Anne Pippin Burnett
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520919955
Total Pages : 745 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy written by Anne Pippin Burnett and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern readings of ancient Athenian drama tend to view it as a presentation of social or moral problems, as if ancient drama showed the same realism seen on the present-day stage. Such views are belied by the plays themselves, in which supremely violent actions occur in a legendary time and place distinct both from reality and from the ethics of ordinary life. Offering fresh readings of Attic tragedy, Anne Pippin Burnett urges readers to peel away twentieth-century attitudes toward vengeance and reconsider the revenge tragedies of ancient Athens in their own context. After a consideration of how our view of Elizabethan drama has obscured an accurate view of the ancient tragedies, Burnett reviews early Greek notions of vengeance as expressed in the Odyssey, Heracles' tales, Pindar's odes, Attic judicial processes, and the legend of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Then, setting aside post-Platonic and Judeo-Christian notions of criminality, she provides new interpretations of all the Attic tragedies in which revenge is a central theme: Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, Sophocles' Ajax, Electra, and Tereus, and Euripides' Children of Heracles, Hecuba, Medea, Electra, and Orestes. Burnett shows that for the ancients, revenge meant a redress of imbalances in both human and divine worlds, achieved through human actions. The vengeful heroines thus appear in a new light. Electra, Hecuba, Medea, and others cease to be the picture of depravity in dramas that are grotesque and sensational, and are instead representative human figures who respond with grandeur to the outsize demands of necessity and supernatural powers.

Author : N. Yamagata
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004329366
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Homeric Morality written by N. Yamagata and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Homeric Morality is an attempt to answer two questions: whether or not the Homeric gods are concerned with 'justice' in human society, and what mechanism controls the social behaviour of Homeric man. It shows that the gods distribute good and bad fortune to men not in response to their moral behaviour, bus as required by fate; men, however, believe that the gods are concerned with human morality, and subsequently their behaviour is restrained by their faith in the moral gods as well as by many other forces, social and emotional. This volume, taken as a whole, serves as a sustained critique of two influential works in the field, The Justice of Zeus by H. Lloyd- Jones and Merit and Responsibility by A.W.H. Adkins.