Women as Victims of War in Homer’s Oral Poetics

Zieliński Zieliński

doi:10.3390/h8030141

Abstract

The article presents the problem of the empathy felt by the author or authors of the Iliad and Odyssey towards women depicted as victims of war. Understanding of the world in the Homeric poems may be misinterpreted today. Since Homer’s works are a product of oral culture, in order to determine his intentions, it is necessary to look at them from the perspective of the tradition from which they derive. Furthermore, the author of an oral work can be deemed as creative because s/he shapes his/her story through interaction with the listening audience. The different aspects of the relationship of women as victims of war with their oppressors are, therefore, interpreted according to the use of traditional techniques adopted to evoke specific emotions in the audience.

Highlights

The article presents the problem of the empathy felt by the author or authors of the Iliad and Odyssey towards women depicted as victims of war
The question of what this issue meant to Homer, i.e., whether he acknowledged such treatment of women as expected behavior, necessitates an attempt to reconstruct the mental world of the people of that time
In the tradition of the Trojan War entwined around the Iliad, this role is played by Andromache, not mentioned elsewhere in the Odyssey

Summary

Introduction

The article presents the problem of the empathy felt by the author or authors of the Iliad and Odyssey towards women depicted as victims of war. Let us note, that women perform a ritual function here, that is, they express what constitutes an indispensable element of the tradition: a fallen warrior, a hero must be properly mourned.

Results

Conclusion