Featured Themes at CHS: Epic, Collaboration, and Multigenerational Research, June 2014

The Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to feature the following books and articles, all of which are freely available on the CHS website.

Casey Dué and Mary Ebbott
Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush: A Multitext Edition with Essays and Commentary
Iliad 10 has historically been the epic’s most doubted book and the book least likely to be judged “Homeric.” In the course of this monograph Dué and Ebbott move beyond what are essentially Analyst or Unitarian positions in order to pose new questions about this poetry. Dué and Ebbott confront deeply entrenched ideas about the Doloneia. Ignoring or only barely acknowledging Iliad 10 is a strategy employed by many scholars, who likely feel they must ignore it so as not to incur the charge of making arguments about Homer based on an “interpolated,” “un-Homeric,” or otherwise problematic text. Nevertheless, the authors feel that there is an entirely different way of treating this book. Rather than dismiss it as “un-Homeric” or pass over it in silence, they propose to show that Iliad 10 offers us unique insight into such important topics as the process of composition-in-performance, the traditional themes of Archaic Greek epic, the nature of the hero, and the creativity and artistry of the oral traditional language.

Casey Dué is Associate Professor and Director of Classical Studies at the University of Houston.
Mary Ebbott is Associate Professor of Classics at the College of the Holy Cross.

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