Helen of Troy and Her Shameless Phantom / Norman Austin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Austin, Norman, author.

Series:

Myth and Poetics Series

Myth and Poetics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Helen, of Troy, Queen of Sparta--In literature.

Trojan War--Literature and the war.

Greek literature--History and criticism.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 223 p. :) ill. ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Like the male heroes of epic poetry, Helen of Troy has been immortalized, but not for deeds of strength and honor; she is remembered as the beautiful woman who disgraced herself and betrayed her family and state. Norman Austin here surveys interpretations of Helen in Greek literature from the Homeric period through later antiquity. He looks most closely at a revisionist myth according to which Helen never sailed to Troy, but remained blameless, while a libertine phantom or ghost impersonated her at Troy. Comparing the functions of contradictory images of Helen, Austin helps to clarify the problematic relations between beauty and honor and between ugliness and shame in ancient Greece.Austin first discusses the canonical account of the Iliad and the Odyssey: Helen as the archetype of woman without shame. He next considers different versions of Helen in the Homeric tradition. Among these, he shows how Sappho presents Helen as an icon of absolute beauty while she defends her own preference of eros over honor and her choice of woman as the object of desire. Austin then turns to three major authors who repudiated the traditional Helen of Troy: the lyric poet Stesichorus and the dramatist Euripides, who embraced the alternative myth of Helen's phantom; and the historian Herodotus, who claimed to have found in Egypt a Helen story that dispenses with both Helen and the phantom. Austin maintains that the conflicting motives that prompted these writers to rehabilitate Helen led to further revisions of her image, though none have endured as a credible substitute for the Helen of epic tradition.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Foreword / Nagy, Gregory

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. The Traditional Helen

1. The Helen of the Iliad

2. Sappho's Helen and the Problem of the Text

Part II. The Revised Helen

3. The Helen of the Odyssey

4. Stesichorus and His Palinode

5. Herodotus and Helen in Egypt

6. Euripides' Helen: The Final Revision

Glossary of Greek Terms

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-215) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Apr 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501720703

1501720708

OCLC:

1132220566