HOMER and the DUAL MODEL of the TRAGIC
HOMER <= and the DUAL MODEL of the TRAGIC THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS ANN ARBOR
Copyright by the University of Michigan 2008 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 2011 2010 2009 2008 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rinon, Yoav. Homer and the dual model of the tragic /. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-472-11663-8 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-472-11663-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Homer Criticism and interpretation. 2. Tragic, The, in literature. 3. Absurd, The, in literature. I. Title. pa4037.r56 2008 883'.01 dc22 2008015030
to Hannah Cotton
Acknowledgments This book originated in research initiated during a 1997 postdoctoral fellowship at Balliol College of Oxford University, with Professor Jasper Griffin as host. I am greatly indebted to Professor Griffin for his personal kindness and intellectual magnanimity during that period and much after. The humane insights of his classic text, Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980), have profoundly influenced my own conception of the Iliad and the Odyssey, as evident in this book. The project began in Oxford and continued in Israel, funded in 2003 5 by a very generous three-year grant from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), founded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. I gratefully acknowledge the ISF s contribution to the realization of this project. While working on Homer and the Dual Model of the Tragic, I was supported by friends and colleagues whose encouragement was essential to its completion. I would like to thank Margalit Finkelberg and Deborah Levine Gera for their professional advice and personal interest. Nita Schechet, as always, was an endless source of inspiration, and her acute responses enabled me to better formulate my ideas and to get rid of some very long passages that were sent before their time into this breathing world, scarce half made up. In addition, I was blessed with two generously attentive anonymous readers who gave me many excellent suggestions that greatly improved my argument. I also wish to thank Chris Hebert, Ellen Bauerle, Mary Hashman,
viii acknowledgments and Alexa Ducsay of the University of Michigan Press for their highly professional and extremely efficient production of this book. All remaining mistakes are, of course, my responsibility. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family: my parents, Shlomo and Yardena Rinon; my daughter Danielle; and my life partner, Gershon Lanzberg, for their boundless sustenance. This book is dedicated to Hannah Cotton, my teacher, my mentor, and most of all my friend, whose constant and indefatigable support enabled me to safely cross that sea of troubles, the tenure track. The following chapters are based on earlier and previously published essays, for which permission is gratefully acknowledged as follows. Chapter 1: Harvard University Press for A Tragic Pattern in the Iliad, from Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 104, edited by Nino Luraghi (2008). Chapter 3: The Johns Hopkins University Press for The Pivotal Scene: Narration, Colonial Focalization, and Transition in Odyssey 9, American Journal of Philology 128 (2007): 301 34. Chapter 5: Koninklijke Brill N.V. for Mise en abyme and Tragic Signification in the Odyssey: The Three Songs of Demodocus, Mnemosyne 59 (2006): 208 25. Chapter 6: Phoenix, Journal of the Classical Association of Canada for Tragic Hephaestus: The Humanized God in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Phoenix 40 (2006): 1 20. I would also like to thank the Museo Nacional del Prado for permission to use Velázquez s La Fragua de Vulcano for the jacket design.
Contents Introduction 1 1. A Tragic Pattern in the Iliad: Missed Kairos, Misunderstandings, and Missing the Dead 13 2. Painful Remembrance of Things Past: Passive Suffering, Agonizing Recognitions, and Doleful Memories in the Odyssey 45 3. The Pivotal Scene and the Tragic: Heteroglossia, Focalization, and Colonialism in Odyssey 9 65 4. Hector in Flight: The Absurd and the Tragic in the Iliad 96 5. Mise en abyme and the Tragic: Metaphysical Recognition in the Three Songs of Demodocus 114 6. Tragic Hephaestus: The Humanized God in the Iliad and the Odyssey 127 7. The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Dual Model of the Tragic 145 Notes 151 Bibliography 195 Index 205