The Ironies of War: An Introduction to Homer's Iliad
This book is a sustained interpretative essay addressed to the Greekless reader. It does not digress into speculations about the many historical questions common to such introductions but directs the reader's attention to the central issue of interpreting the epic with his modern imagination. The author seeks to give the Greekless reader the confidence to enter Homer's poem without a sense that he lacks the necessary historical discipline. The central interpretative thrust of this work stresses that the central issue in a study of the Iliad is the picture of warfare, an eternally present way human beings think about one aspect of their condition. Contents: include: An Introduction, Homer's Vision of War; War, Nature, and the Gods; The Heroic Code; Arms and the Men; The Iliad as a Tragedy: The Warrior, the Victim, and the Tragic Hero; and Homer and the Modern Imagination
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0819170291
ISBN13:9780819170293
Release Date:November 1988
Publisher:University Press of America
Length:166 Pages
Weight:1.80 lbs.
Dimensions:1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Best Book on the Iliad for the Greekless Reader
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
Johnston has written what must be considered the most engaging, provocative study of the Iliad in the 20th-century. Perhaps it took a non-Classicist (in the professional sense) to write about the Iliad in such a stimulating manner. Johnston removes the Judeo-Christian tinted glasses that the majority of scholars have worn while reading the text and bases his interpretation on the essence of the Homeric world as found in the Iliad (and a quite different one from that of the Odyssey!). Johnston's prose is not particularly stylish, but his ideas are unfailingly stimulating. Though short (145 pages), this book packs one powerful punch. The only other work to approach it is Redfield's 1975 "Nature and Culture in the Iliad."
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