Homer’s Iliad and the Problem of Force

Homer’s Iliad and the Problem of Force – Ebook Instant Download/Delivery ISBN(s): 9780192862877,0192862871,9780192677426, 019267742X

Product detail:

• ISBN 10: 019267742X
• ISBN 13: 978019267742
• Author: Charles H. Stocking

The topic of force has long remained a problem of interpretation for readers of Homer’s Iliad, ever since Simone Weil famously proclaimed it as the poem’s main subject. This book seeks to address that problem through a full-scale treatment of the language of force in the Iliad from both philological and philosophical perspectives. Each chapter explores the different types of Iliadic force in combination with the reception of the Iliad in the French intellectual tradition. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the different terms for force in the Iliad give expression to distinct relations between self and “other.” At the same time, this book reveals how the Iliad as a whole undermines the very relations of force which characters within the poem seek to establish. Ultimately, this study of force in the Iliad offers an occasion to reconsider human subjectivity in Homeric poetry.

Table of contents: 

1. “Stronger”: Performative Speech and the Force of Achilles
2. The Homeric Scepter: Speech and the Source of Authority
3. A Performative Intervention: Nestor’s Scale of Superiority in Iliad 1
4. Force, Speech, and the Genealogy of Achilles
5. The Force of Zeus and Its Performative Limits
6. Conclusion
7. Kratos before Democracy: Force, Politics, and Signification in the Iliad
8. Towards a Political Theology of Force in Homer and Hesiod
9. The Alterity of Kratos: Philological and Mythopoetic Interventions
10. Misinterpreting Kratos: Zeus’ Deception of Agamemnon
11. Reinterpreting Kratos: Diomedes’ Rebuke
12. Conclusion
13. Force and Discourse in the Funeral Games of Patroclus
14. The Problem of Force in the Funeral Games: Nestor’s Advice to Antilochus
15. Foucault and the Funeral Games: Menelaus’ Quarrel with Antilochus
16. Reversals in the “Regime of Truth”: Eumelus and Ajax
17. Resolution through Discourse: Achilles’ Interventions and the End of the Agōn
18. Conclusion
19. The “Force that Kills”: Simone Weil and the Problem of Agency in the Iliad
20. Simone Weil on Force and the Subject in Homer and History
21. Subjects of Force in the Iliad
22. Force, Fate, and Death: Sarpedon, Patroclus, and Hector

People also search: