Homer: Iliad Book I

Description

Book I of the Iliad marks the beginning of the first surviving work of Greek literature. This edition with commentary enables readers at all levels to interpret the poetry with heightened pleasure and understanding. It provides help with the morphology, grammar, and syntax of Homeric Greek, situates the poem in its historical and poetic contexts, and elucidates its traditional language, meter, rhetoric, and style, as well as its distinctive transformation of traditional mythology and narrative motifs in accordance with its own interests, values, and poetic purposes. It also addresses the programmatic contrast in Book I between gods and humans; the characterization of both major and minor figures; and the thematic significance in Book I and the poem generally of the representation of social, cultural, religious, and ethical institutions and values. Fully accessible to undergraduates and graduate students, this edition also contains much of value for the scholar. Cover Half-title Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Preface page Quotations, Citations, and Abbreviations Abbreviations of Standard Reference Works Introduction 1 Contexts 1.1 The Poetic Context 1.2 The Historical Context 2 The Structure of the Iliad 3 Book 1 in the Iliad 3.1 The Plan of Zeus 3.2 Achilles 3.2.1 Mortality 3.2.2 Honor 3.3 Other Characters 4 The Gods in the Iliad 4.1 The Olympian Gods 4.2 Gods and Humans 5 Meter, Language, and Style 5.1 Meter 5.1.1 Heavy and Light Syllables 5.1.2 The Dactylic Hexameter 5.1.3 Prosodic Freedom 5.1.4 Scansion 5.2 The Homeric Language 5.2.1 Literary Language and the Mixture of Dialects 5.2.2 Evolution of the Literary Language 5.2.3 Some Morphological Features of Homeric Greek 5.2.4 Notes on Syntax 5.3 Style 5.3.1 Formulas 5.3.2 The Narrative 5.3.3 The Speeches 5.3.4 Mythological Allusion 5.3.5 Parataxis 6 The Transmission of the Text 6.1 Manuscripts, Scholia, Papyri 6.2 The Proem 6.3 Book Divisions and Titles A Note on the Text and Apparatus Criticus ΟΜΗΡΟΥ ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ Α Commentary Works Cited Indexes 1 Subjects 2 Greek Words