This book draws on studies of movement, gesture, and early film to offer a series of readings on repetition through the body in Homer. Each chapter presents an argument based on a specific posture, action or gesture, through which to rethink epic practices of embodiment and formularity.

In this paper I consider ways in which seawater––both on its surface and in its depths––opens up alternative forms of thought and expression in Homer, especially with respect to the body. By tracking the relationship between body and simile as it is mediated by the surface of the sea, I argue that water emerges as an especially mobile and adaptive medium for expressing the transformation that takes place between self and simile in Homer. In the Iliad, similes are well-known for (...) bringing weather, waves, and other aspects of the natural environment into the poem, whereas in the Odyssey those aspects more often introduce similes of their own. I offer a reading of the shipwreck scene in Odyssey 5 to suggest that the body’s struggle to stay afloat is matched there, on a formal level, by the role of waves in drawing simile and body to the sea’s surface. I then address a different kind of figurative language (closer to metaphor and associated with grief) that takes place in the depths, through readings of scenes in Books 18 and 24 of the Iliad and Archilochus fragment 13. (shrink)

A path-breaking collection launching a new series of books on the senses in antiquity. Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses presents a radical reappraisal of antiquity's textures, flavours, and aromas, sounds and sights. It offers both a fresh look at society in the ancient world and an opportunity to deepen the reading of classical literature. The book will appeal to readers in classical society and literature, philosophy and cultural history. All Greek and Latin is translated and technical matters are explained for (...) the non-specialist. The introduction sets the ancient senses within the history of aesthetics and the subsequent essays explore the senses throughout the classical period and on to the modern reception of classical literature. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the relation between mortal and immortal time in the Iliad as it is represented by the physical act of falling. I begin by arguing that falling serves as a point of reference throughout the poem for a concept of time that is specifically human. It is well known that mortals fall at the moment of death in the poem, but it has not been recognized that the movement of the fall is also connected with (...) the time of birth, aging, and generation. In light of the significance of falling for mortals, I then go on to examine the problematic case of two particular immortals who fall in the Iliad. When Hephaestus tumbles down to earth from Olympus, and when Ares is knocked flat on the battlefield, both gods, I argue, also “fall into” human time. This complicates their status as ageless and eternal beings, and draws into question the different temporal registers at work in the narrative . The single action of falling brings together several key concepts in the poem which hinge on the issue of the separation between the mortal and immortal spheres in the Iliad. (shrink)