| Description |
1 online resource (xiv, 255 pages). |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Series |
Greek studies: interdisciplinary approaches
|
|
Greek studies.
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-245) and index. |
| Contents |
The quarrel -- Heroic psychology -- Mythobiographies -- Catharsis and denial -- Fathers and sons -- Mothers and sons -- Departures from maternal agendas -- Self in crisis. |
| Summary |
"Viewing the Iliad and myth through the lens of modern psychology, in Becoming Achilles: Child-Sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the lliad and Beyond Richard Holway shows 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 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 resulting strifewithin 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 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 unlike needy, defenseless children, who fear to acknowledge, much less speak out against, parents' use of them to meet 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"--Provided by publisher. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Homer. Iliad.
|
|
Iliad (Homer) |
|
Psychology in literature.
|
|
Psychology in literature. |
|
Families -- Greece -- History -- To 1500.
|
|
Families. |
|
Greece. |
|
History. |
| Chronological Term |
To 1500 |
| Subject |
Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism.
|
|
Epic poetry, Greek. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
|
|
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
|
|
History.
|
|
Electronic books.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Holway, Richard, 1945- Becoming Achilles. Lanham, Md. : Lexington Books, ©2012 9780739146903 (DLC) 2011028638 (OCoLC)727709877 |
| ISBN |
9780739146927 (electronic book) |
|
0739146920 (electronic book) |
|
9780739146903 (cloth ; alkaline paper) |
|
0739146904 (cloth ; alkaline paper) |
|
9780739146910 (paperback ; alkaline paper) |
|
0739146912 (paperback ; alkaline paper) |
|
