Geography of the Iliad and Homer

Homer:’The Poet’ ’

Epic as a Literary Genre Epic Conventions

• Invocation to the muses • Beginning in medias res • Elevated meter and style • Catalogues • Elaborate similes • Epic formulae • Noun-epithet combinations • Repeated lines • Repeated passages • Type scenes • Divine Machinery:

Anthropomorphic gods model, interact with, and judge human behavior and society

Subject • Long narrative poem • Central figure of heroic

proportions whose story unifies series of episodes

• Actions are deeds of great valor and effect

• Episodes important to the history and ethos of audience

• Setting is vast in scope, e.g. national, international, cosmic

• Supernatural forces are involved and give significance to human action

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TThe Rape of the Lock: Canto 1 BY ALEXANDER POPE Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos; Sedjuvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis. (Martial, Epigrams 12.84) What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things, I sing—This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due: This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view: Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, If she inspire, and he approve my lays. Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel A well-bred lord t' assault a gentle belle? O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor'd, Could make a gentle belle reject a lord? In tasks so bold, can little men engage, And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?

Agamemnon and Chryses, the Priest of Apollo

Book 1, 9-40

Apollo Sends Plague to Greek Camp, 1,41-60

Chalchas, the Greek Seer

Achilles, here with Athena

The Assembly, 1. 61-354

The Quarrel: 1.125-317 • Nestor tries to mediate

Chryseis Sent Home: 1. 361-372;

Thetis consoles Achilles: 1. 412-513

Argives return daughter to Priest with proper Respect 1. 514-566

Thetis goes to Zeus: 1.587-636

Zeus and Hera, 1.632-686

Night falls on Olympus

Thersites: 2. 218-324

Catalogue of Greek Ships 2. 555-895 Similes