Becoming Achilles : child-sacrifice, war, and misrule in the Iliad and beyond / Richard Holway.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Holway, Richard, 1945-

Series:

Greek studies

Greek studies: interdisciplinary approaches

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Homer. Iliad.

Homer.

Psychology in literature.

Families--Greece--History--To 1500.

Families.

Epic poetry, Greek--History and criticism.

Epic poetry, Greek.

History.

Greece.

Physical Description:

xiv, 255 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Lexington Books, [2012]

Summary:

Viewing the Iliad and myth through the lens of modern psychology, Richard Holway shows in Becoming Achilles: Child-Sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the Iliad and Beyond how the epic underwrites individual and communal catharsis and denial. Sacrificial childrearing generates but also threatens agonistic, glory-seeking ancient Greek cultures. Not only aggression but also knowledge of sacrificial parenting must be purged.

Just as Zeus contrives to have threats to his regime play out harmlessly (to him) in the mortal realm, so the Iliad dramatizes threats to Archaic and later Greek cultures in the safe arena of poetic performance. The epic represents in displaced form destructive mother-son and father-daughter liaisons and the resulting strife within and between generations.

Holway calls into question the Iliad's (and many scholars') presentation of Achilles as a hero who speaks truth to power, learns through suffering, and exemplifies the kingly virtues that Agamemnon lacks. So too the Iliad's cathartic process, whether conceived as purging innate aggression or arriving at moral clarity. Instead, Holway argues, Achilles (and Socrates) try to prove they are the opposite of needy, defenseless children, who fear to acknowledge, much less speak out against, their sacrifice to parents' needs.

What emerges from Holway's analysis is not only a new reading of the Iliad, from its first word to its last, but a revised account of the family dynamics underlying ancient Greek cultures. Book jacket.

Contents:

The quarrel

Heroic psychology

Mythobiographies

Catharsis and denial

Fathers and sons

Mothers and sons

Departures from maternal agendas

Self in crisis.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739146903

0739146904

9780739146910

0739146912

9780739146927

0739146920

OCLC:

727709877