The Homeric Doloneia: Evolution and Shaping of Iliad 10 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780192870988)

The Doloneia is the most controversial book of the Iliad, its authenticity having been doubted since antiquity. Modern scholars are divided between those who regard it as a major interpolation by a later poet who was trained in the technique of epic composition and those who see it as the earliest manifestation of the very ancient theme of lochos. However, the first claim assumes the stylistic homogeneity of book 10, while the second sweeps out dictional and thematic difficulties by attributing them to the theme of ambush that is weakly represented in the extant corpus of archaic Greek epic.

By applying sophisticated interpretive tools such as intratextual association, intertextual allusion, and oral neoanalysis, this book maintains that Iliad 10 is thematically consonant with the rest of the Iliad and that it has evolved from an earlier Iliadic version after the addition of the Rhesus episode, which did not circulate as an independent composition but formed part of lost oral epic poetry with cyclic features that focused on the events after the death of Achilles.

Author: Christos C. Tsagalis
ISBN-10: 019287098X
ISBN-13: 9780192870988
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English
Published: 12/26/2024
Pages: 368
Format: Hardcover