Becoming Achilles [electronic resource] : child-sacrifice, war, and misrule in the Iliad and beyond / Richard Holway.
Holway, Richard, 1945-
2012
PA4037 .H7725 2012eb
Available Online

Linked e-resources

Linked Resource Online Access

Details

Title Becoming Achilles [electronic resource] : child-sacrifice, war, and misrule in the Iliad and beyond / Richard Holway.
Author Holway, Richard, 1945-
ISBN 9780739146927 (electronic book)
0739146920 (electronic book)
9780739146903
0739146904
9780739146910
0739146912
Publication Details Lanham, Md. : Lexington Books, c2012.
Language English
Description 1 online resource (xiv, 255 p.)
Call Number PA4037 .H7725 2012eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 883/.01
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.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-245) and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description Description based on print version record.
Series Greek studies.
Available in Other Form Becoming Achilles.
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources
The quarrel
Heroic psychology
Mythobiographies
Catharsis and denial
Fathers and sons
Mothers and sons
Departures from maternal agendas
Self in crisis.

Browse Subjects

Show more subjects...

Statistics

from
to
Export