Homer's Iliad Research Articles

Food Fiction and Food Fact in Homer's Iliad

Food Fiction and Food Fact in Homer's Iliad

Decoding the black essence of Melianthus nectar.

This article is a Commentary on Magner et al. (2023), 239: 2026–2040.

País de Jauja by Edgardo Rivera Martínez

Reviewed by: País de Jauja by Edgardo Rivera Martínez César Ferreira EDGARDO RIVERA MARTÍNEZ País de Jauja Lima. Alfaguara. 2022. 640 pages. EDGARDO RIVERA MARTÍNEZ'S first novel, País de Jauja, received immediate critical acclaim when it was published in Peru in 1993. Some thirty years later, it is considered a canonical work in Peruvian letters. This edición definitiva of País de Jauja not only underscores the author's artistic excellence; it is also a tribute to his many contributions to the topic of mestizaje in contemporary Peruvian culture. País de Jauja is set in 1947 and takes place in the town of Jauja in the Peruvian central highlands. The novel follows Claudio, a teenager from a middle-class family, over several weeks of summer vacation. During this time, Claudio's life is marked by a series of events that serve as a rite of passage to a higher level of intellectual and affective maturity, including his discovery of sexuality. The protagonist's mother, who encourages his musical vocation, plays an important role in his life, as does his older brother, who promotes Claudio's literary interests. With his mother's guidance, Claudio records lyrics to Andean music that will be played on the piano. In addition, he is fascinated by Homer's Iliad, which he reads over the summer, as well as the Andean oral legends he hears from an elderly housekeeper. Thus, the boy who began his summer playing with his classmates quickly reaches a degree of maturity as he realizes his artistic vocation and, more importantly, becomes aware of his multicultural heritage. In this coming-of-age story, the town of Jauja itself is the real center of the novel. Jauja serves as a symbiotic, utopian space promoting the intermingling of cultures in a genuine process of mestizaje. Moreover, it is a mediating space between the experience of modernity rooted in Lima, Peru's capital, and the remote Andean world. In Jauja, the Apus—the tutelary gods of the mountains—and the mythical Amarus—winged serpents inhabiting the sacred mountains—still exert their influence over the lives of its inhabitants. In short, Jauja is not only a version of paradise where people from all over the world migrate for the curative power of its climate, but it is also a symbol of the felicitous union of Western and Andean values that have traditionally been considered incompatible in Peru's cultural history. Edgardo Rivera Martínez is a key name in contemporary Peruvian letters. As País de Jauja clearly demonstrates, he is a gifted storyteller who presents mestizaje in a positive light—a complex but all-inclusive process in which Peru can see itself as a diverse, multicultural nation. [End Page 81] César Ferreira University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

From Hatred to Love: Development of a Literary Topos in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931)

In the present study, two literary topics of love are introduced and its historical development is traced from the classical tradition to the modern culture. Also being studied is Eugene O'Neill's modern American tragedy, Electra Is Good for Mourning (1931). These topics consist of 'love for hate' and 'jealousy in love'. It is argued that both topics comprise four stages, originate in ancient Greek and Roman literature and evolve into modern culture, as in O'Neill's work, following tradition. Also, despite critics' belief that Electra is fine with mourningO'Neill's is based on the versions of Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus on the history of Orestes and Electra, the contextualization of these two topics follows the tradition of Homer's Iliad and Ovid 's Metamorphoses. Finally, this article studies the appearance of each mole on television and in contemporary world cinema, such as the British La Joven Jane Austen (2007), the Iranian Shahrzad Series (2015) and the American La La Land (2016).

La légende d’Andromaque dans l’œuvre d’Homère a-t-elle influencé celle de Virgile au chant III de l’Eneide ?

Andromache, the wife of Hector in Homer's Iliad, is a source of inspiration for ancient writers. Homer presents her as a model woman, full of affection for her husband Hector. However, the latter did not fail to predict the fall of Troy, the slavery of Trojan women and the cruel fate of young Astyanax. Virgil shows Andromache after the Homeric predictions. At the head of a community of Trojans, Andromache, who became the wife of Hélénos, the younger brother of Hector, after falling to Neoptolemus, reconstitutes a small Troy in Buthrote, thus perpetuating the memory of their lost part. The heroine still thinks of her former husband Hector. Helenos, consulted by Aeneas, presents himself as a real diviner advising and revealing to him the obstacles that stand before him for the foundation of his new city.

The Epic Tradition in the Song Natrinai

The reason for the pride and richness of a language is due to the grammar and literature that have emerged in the eyes of that language. The epics occupy a significant place in those verses. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, considered to be the oldest epics in the world, have also been written in accordance with the epic tradition of that language. Indian language epics are also written within the epic tradition of the regional languages. These include the five great and minor epics that have appeared in the Tamil language; the Kamba Ramayanam, the Periyapuranam, etc. However, if we examine whether the Sangam literature, viz., the songs and the thokai, falls within the epic tradition, the Agam and Puram songs contain at least a few of the epic traditions of the Dandiya author. It can be seen that the majority of the epic elements have been matched in the Kalitthokai and the Pathuppaattu Songs. This study is intended to examine how the epic traditions have adapted to the song that has been taken up for the subject matter of the study. In particular, this study has revealed whether the epic grammar of the Dandiya author has been followed.

War among animals in Greek thought

Abstract Ethologists have observed that some animals use organised violence against members of their own species. Some well-known scholars call this form of animal aggression war, deliberately omitting the quotation marks. And how was it in antiquity? Was war believed to be part of the animal world? The aim of the presented article is to analyse the ancient written sources in search of correlations between the notion of war and animals, and to determine what conceptual assumptions lie at the heart of this correlation. In light of the preserved records, it seems that the conviction about the existence of an inherent correlation between war and the animal world emerged slowly; that is, basic military terms (polemos, machē, etc.) were used with respect to animals reluctantly in the beginning and rather metaphorically, but gained popularity over time. Even though animals appear in the military context beginning from Homer's Iliad, Aristotle was most probably the first one to explicitly formulate a thesis about the presence of war (polemos) in the animal world. Aristotle's concept of war comes down to a series of duels fought between animals. It seems that what made it easier for Aristotle to transfer the notion of a battle (machē) from the human world to the animal world was the Greek tendency to present duels between soldiers as being equivalent to a clash between two armies.

Homer's First Battle Supplication and the End of Virgil's Aeneid

One of the less appreciated literary influences on the Virgilian depiction of Aeneas' decision to slay Turnus at the end of the Aeneid is the first battle supplication scene in Homer's Iliad, the encounter of Adrestus with Menelaus and Agamemnon. Close consideration of Virgil's response to the Homeric scene sheds light on the poet's concerns in his presentation of the choice his Trojan hero Aeneas confronts in light of Turnus' appeal. Acrostics at the end of the Aeneid invite further reflection.

Reviewing not Homer's Iliad, but "Kai Bao Ben Cao": indigo dye-the past, present, and future.

Reviewing not Homer's Iliad, but "Kai Bao Ben Cao": indigo dye-the past, present, and future.

First documented clinical account of brachial plexus palsy from the 12th century.

Although literary depiction of brachial plexus injury can be traced to Homer's Iliad, there is a scientific consensus that the first clinical description of brachial plexus palsy was not documented until the British physician Smellie reported it in the 18th century. However, the authors' recent review of the Syriac Book of Medicines (12th century) has uncovered a much earlier clinical documentation. For this historical vignette, the authors reviewed the historical and anatomical literature regarding earlier descriptions of brachial plexus anatomy and pathology, including a thorough analysis of the Syriac Book of Medicines (attributed to an unknown Syriac physician in the Middle Ages) and Galen's On Anatomical Procedures and On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body. Building on the galenic tradition with reference to independent dissections, the Syriac physician discussed nervous system anatomy and the clinical localization of neurological injuries. He described a patient who, after initial pulmonary symptoms, developed upper-extremity weakness more pronounced in the proximal muscles. His anatomical correlation placed the injury "where the nerves issue from the first and second muscles between the ribs" (scalene muscles), are "mixed," and "spread through many parts." The patient's presentation and recovery raise the possibility of Parsonage-Turner syndrome. The anatomical description of the brachial plexus is in line with Galen's earlier account and step-by-step surgical exposure, which the authors reviewed. They also examined Ibn Ilyas' drawing of the brachial plexus, which is believed to be a copy of the earliest artistic representation of the plexus. Whereas the Middle Ages were seen as a period of scientific stagnation from a Western perspective, Galen's teachings continued to thrive and develop in the East. Syriac physicians were professional translators, clinicians, and anatomists. There is evidence that brachial plexus palsy was documented in the Syriac Book of Medicines 6 centuries before Smellie.

Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths

Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths

Tennyson's Lancet Touches: The Rape of the Lock and The Princess

Tennyson's Lancet Touches:The Rape of the Lock and The Princess James Williams (bio) The Princess and The Rape of the Lock have not often been read together, which may or may not be surprising. On the one hand, the experiences each poem offers to its readers are—as Oscar Wilde's Gwendolen says, comparing her social circle to Cecily's—widely different.1 The High Victorian medievalism of Tennyson's poem is far removed from the proto-rococo of Pope's. The Princess is a version of pastoral, whereas The Rape of the Lock is an urbane, if suburban, poem, making beelines for the boudoir, the salon, and the court. The Princess is a self-described "medley"—"evad[ing]," in Christopher Ricks's words, "the artistic problems of the long poem"2—where The Rape of the Lock is all of a tightly wrought piece (whether read in two cantos or, more often, five). On the other hand, there is much in The Princess to suggest Tennyson was conscious of Pope's poem as a model. Not least, there is the central narrative situation of female integrity and chastity tested by the devious ingenuity of male heterosexual desire, and the central metaphor of erotic love as warfare, whether played out as battle of wits, game of cards, or by proxy in the tourney. Both poems depend on epic points of reference, and both feature a supporting cast of feminine mythological agents, such as nymphs, graces, and muses. Most suggestively, there is the generic affinity pinpointed by a phrase in the literarycritical debate "betwixt the mockers and the realists" (l. 24)3 in The Princess's conclusion: Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of sevenTogether in one sheaf? What style could suit?The men required that I should give throughoutThe sort of mock-heroic gigantesque,With which we bantered little Lilia first: [End Page 161] The women …… …They hated banter, wished for something real ("Conclusion," ll. 8–13, 18) This is usually read as an arch refusal on Tennyson's part to resolve the many formal and intellectual tensions of his poem: the mocking and the earnest, comic narrative and lyric interlude, the rival claims of paleontology and fairyland. But "mock-heroic" goes further, asserting a place in a literary tradition that runs straight back to Pope, and beyond him to Boileau's Le Lutrin—the model behind Umbriel's descent into the splenetic underworld in Canto IV of The Rape of the Lock—Addison, Cervantes, and to such ancient models as the pseudo-Homeric Batrachomyomachia. The genre to which the framing debate of The Princess points, however ambivalently, is the genre of The Rape of the Lock, and this seems like a tempting focus for critical inquiry in the work of a poet more inclined to imitate Virgil, Shakespeare, and Milton than the eighteenth-century Augustan manner. "Imitation" may be the wrong word to describe the relationship between these poems, but the Popean layer running through The Princess demands consideration against a background of earlier imitation, born of youthful enthusiasm. I want to turn to this background first, in order to come back in the latter part of this essay to look at The Princess more closely. As Tennyson recalled to his son in 1890: About ten or eleven Pope's Homer's Iliad became a favourite of mine and I wrote hundreds and hundreds of lines in the regular Popeian metre, nay even could improvise them, so could my two elder brothers, for my father was a poet and could write regular metre very skilfully.4 Tennyson would not have been the only Regency clergyman's son to find Pope's Homer among the more diverting items on his father's bookshelf, but the way he tells the story bears closer inspection. While the capacity, at "ten or eleven," to write and improvise Popean lines in their "hundreds" may now look to us like a claim to youthful precocity, Tennyson is quick to disclaim any special capacity for imitation or composition within the family circle. In fact, the most intriguing feature of this superficially bland memoir is the way that it tilts, within...

ЕПІЧНА МАНІЯ: ВІДПОВІДЬ ПАУНДА Е. ПО ТА Т. Г’ЮМУ

The article is devoted to the analysis of a specific component in the post-epic artistic picture of the world contextualized in the genre experiments with epic forms that symbolize the search for new ways to express the substantial unity of the individual with a society. It is important that in «The Poetic Principle» (1850) Poe appeals to the epic tradition and expresses an essential thesis about the paradigm of the epic and the lyrical in precedent texts and mentions a significant lyrical inderpinning in Homer's Iliad. In «A Lecture on Modern Poetry» (1908), Hume posits that the very assumption that in modern poetry there will appear an artist capable of synthesizing all the experience of modern peroson in the form of a great epic is an utter misunderstanding of the tendencies in modern poetry. Both Pound and Yuri Klen consider the creation of a modern epic in the coordinates of the continuum of the national poetic canon. The concept of «return» constitutes an omnipresent aesthetic program of the Pound’s epic. The poetics of repetitions in the Cantos is based on the versification models of the European fixed poetic forms that are extensively represented against the background of new emphases and reformatting of the ancient epic forms, making new their conventions and motives. Creative and receptive aspects of the innovative application of specific features in the epic composition (recurrent historical plots, the νόστος topos) deeply correlate with the artistic form of the modern epic. The author’s personal contribution has been made in reading and comparative contextualization of Pound's Cantos as a response to Poe and Hume's pessimistic prediction about the eventuality or aesthetic significance of the modern epic where Pound draws on the precedent texts and topoi of the ancient Greek epic.

Angus Fletcher. <em>Wonderworks. The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature</em>

Angus Fletcher. <em>Wonderworks. The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature</em>

Covid‐19: Where We Are, What Got Us Here, and Where We Are Likely to Be Going—A Review Essay*

Covid‐19: Where We Are, What Got Us Here, and Where We Are Likely to Be Going—A Review Essay*

THE JAPANESE TROJAN WAR: TEZUKA OSAMU'S ENVISIONING OF THE TROJAN CYCLE

The Trojan cycle has been retold and re-envisioned many times from antiquity to modern times. The themes covered by these myths, especially the Homeric poems, have captivated the minds and hearts of poets, historians, authors, and others. Homer's Iliad extoled the grandeur as well as exposed the ugliness and folly of war. These humanistic virtues resonated with various cultures around the world. In this article we examine the reception of the Trojan cycle, especially the Iliad, on the noted manga artist Tezuka Osamu (1928–89). Recent reception theories focus on the creation of a new composition or artefact as part of the reception process; we shall thus discuss the Phoenix: Early Works manga as an example of such reception.

Reading Pope's Homer in the 1720s: The Iliad Notes of Philip Doddridge

As a young minister in 1725, Philip Doddridge (1702–1751), later to become one of the most influential figures of eighteenth-century Dissent, embarked on a close reading of Homer's Iliad in Greek alongside Pope's English verse translation of 1715–20. As he read he recorded, in shorthand notes, detailed ‘remarks’ critically comparing the Greek and English texts as works of poetry, with a particular eye to the success or otherwise of Pope's version. The unique manuscript containing the remarks has in part survived, and is held by Dr Williams' Library, London. In this discussion, Doddridge is introduced and his remarks transcribed for the first time. They provide a contemporary reading of Pope's Iliad which in its depth and detail goes well beyond anything else available for private readers, as opposed to the professional critics and scholars whose extensive attacks and defences it elicited.

Modern Interpretation of the Themes of Heroes and War in the Movie Troy

The movie Troy is based on Homer's epic Iliad for artistic re-creation. The film is a modern interpretation and reconstruction of the classics with artistic techniques and a profound reflection on the war with unique artistic charm and modern consciousness. The film portrays Agamemnon who is addicted to war, the confused Achilles, the wise Hector and other characters to question the rationality of war and deeply reflect on the profound issues of war and humanity, war and peace. Such creation and reconstruction is also based on historical facts of artistic truth and artistic reconstruction, continuing the author of the original Homer 's reflection and questioning of the world famous war, bringing the audience into deep thinking and unique artistic tension.

Obeležja junačkog epa na primeru pesme o Nibelunzima i pesme o Gudrun

Names such as Goethe, Hesse and literary writers alike are, to the reading public, synonymous for German literature. It is discouraging to see how German heroic epics have not achieved world wide acclaim and popularization, yet their quality precedes that of many bestsellers. Many experts even consider the Nibelungenlied the German equivalent of Homer's Iliad. In this work we will discuss the most significant characteristics of heroic epic by analysing, what we might consider two of the most popular heroic epics in German literature, the Nibelungenlied and the Gudrunlied. These medieval epics are subjects of much scholarly research around the world. For a better understanding of the topic, we will at the very beginning discuss the concepts of epic and heroic prose, their major characteristics as well as their significance in German literature. As the term hero certainly holds a key position in this literary genre we are obligated to hindsight it, and talk through the heroes of the Nibelungenlied and the Gudrunlied. Furthermore, for a better comprehension of the topic it is inevitable to take a closer look at the historical context of these two epics. At the very end we will review their similarities and differences.

Nardostachys jatamansi (D.Don) DC.-Challenges and opportunities of harnessing the untapped medicinal plant from the Himalayas.

Nardostachys jatamansi (D.Don) DC. (family Caprifoliaceae) is prized in the Chinese, Tibetan, Nepalese, Bhutanese, Indian and Japanese systems of medicine. Its medicinal properties are well documented in ancient literature such as the Ayurvedic classics, the Old Testament, Ben-Cao- Shi-Yi, and Homer's Iliad. The plant is critically endangered and found in the alpine and sub-alpine regions of the Himalayas. Our study aims to show the challenges and opportunities of harnessing the untapped pharmaceutical resources of N. jatamansi. Another aim is to explore the possibilities of translating ethnobotanical information into health benefit applications. The sources of information used in the study are government reports, dissertations, books, research articles and databases like Science-Direct, SciFinder, Web of Science, PubMed, Wiley Online Library, and ACS Publications on N. jatamansi. In the study, we have examined and discussed reports on phytochemicals present in the plant, their structure, biological activity, pharmacological properties of extracts derived from plant parts, isolated compounds, and commercially available products from the plant. We have identified and discussed ambiguities and confusions about the plant's nomenclature and geographical distribution, and highlighted various studies that failed to discuss this issue. We analyzed the links between various reports on ethnobotanical information as well as studies on phytochemistry and pharmacologyconfirming the therapeutic properties of N. jatamansi. However, in many of these findings which had used dried samples, there was an uncanny resemblance between the phytochemical profiles and biological activities of N. jatamansi and Valeriana jatamansi Jones ex Roxb. (another genus from family, Caprifoliaceae). Since both the species share identical vernacular names, a possible reason could be that the samples may not have been of two separate species. Other limitations of different studies were the use of out-dated techniques for phytochemical profiling, absence of toxicology studies using animal models and clinical trials using human subjects. Analysis of various studies revealed a confusion about the botanical nomenclature of the plants and their geographical distributions. Absence of proper markers for identification of correct samples and improperly conducted studies on N. jatamansi were found to be the major hurdles to the use of ethnobotanical information and research findings into applications for human health. Development of markers using molecular, chemical and pharmacognosy based approaches for plant authentication and, in vitro propagation of authenticated material for easy availability of genuine plant material are the possible solutions to the problems identified.