Chapters
Introduction
Introduction How many ways are there to tell the story of Troy? A passage from Iliad 20 makes me wonder just how flexible the Homeric tradition might be. At the beginning of book 20, Zeus calls the gods to an assembly. He tells them that they may… Read more
1. Flowers, Subjectivity, and the Gaze: The Erotic Imagery of Greek Lyric
1. Flowers, Subjectivity, and the Gaze: The Erotic Imagery of Greek Lyric The imagery of archaic Greek lyric offers our most promising comparandum for Homeric treatments of flowers and erotic bodies; accordingly, I would like to consider relevant images from the lyric corpus before turning to the… Read more
2. Fantasizing the Narcissus, Gilding the Hyacinth: Flowers, Seduction, and Deception in Homeric Poetry
2. Fantasizing the Narcissus, Gilding the Hyacinth: Flowers, Seduction, and Deception in Homeric Poetry Having studied floral images of the erotic that were developed by the archaic lyric poets, we turn now to the equivalent Homeric images. By comparing these two genres we can set in relief… Read more
3. Shifting Surfaces of Art and Nature: Flowers, Deception, and the Ποικίλον
3. Shifting Surfaces of Art and Nature: Flowers, Deception, and the Ποικίλον I would now like to consider how Homeric associations of flowers, seduction, and deception interacted with the general characteristics of the Greek flora. As we shall see, we get a clearer sense of the origins… Read more
Part II. Cosmic and Civic Order
Part II. Cosmic and Civic Order Preamble In Part I, we considered a set of Homeric floral images associated with erotic bodies, and we explored their interactions with the characteristics of flowers in the Greek natural environment. I would now like to focus on a rather… Read more
4. Stable Trees and Sudden Blooms: Images of Continuity and Change in the Cosmos
4. Stable Trees and Sudden Blooms: Images of Continuity and Change in the Cosmos In this chapter, I will focus on the sorts of images that the Homeric poets associated with the concepts of order in the cosmos and of changes and challenges to that order—or to… Read more
5. Anchises’ Pastures, Laertes’ Orchards: Images of Civilization and Its Opposite
5. Anchises’ Pastures, Laertes’ Orchards: Images of Civilization and Its Opposite Having explored Homeric vegetal imagery that describes order and threats to that order at the cosmic level, we turn now to a set of images that explores similar concepts on the human scale. We found in… Read more
6. The Modes of Generation of Flowers and Trees: Homeric Poetry and Theophrastus
6. The Modes of Generation of Flowers and Trees: Homeric Poetry and Theophrastus In Chapters 4 and 5, we surveyed two sets of Homeric vegetal images. The one set associates arboreal images with the established order of the cosmos and floral images with changes or challenges to… Read more
Part III. Youth and Death
Part III. Youth and Death Preamble The third and final part of this monograph focuses on Homeric vegetal images of death and, in particular, on Homeric associations of death with flowers, which provide some of the most striking examples of such imagery. We might feel intuitively… Read more