Home  |  Archived Pages  |  Syllabus  |  Course Info  |  Email Instructor |  Go to Discussion

Homer's Iliad, Books XIX-XXIV
(click for: Books I-XIIDiagram: Structure of Bk. IBooks XIII-XVIIIBooks XIX-XXIV Book XVIFinal wrap-up)

 

Buy this book at Amazon.com!

      He took the old man's hand and pushed him
gently away, and the two remembered, as Priam sat huddled
at the feet of Achilleus and wept close for manslaughtering Hektor
and Achilleus wept now for his own father, now again
for Patroklos. The sound of their mourning moved in the house...

                                      Iliad, XXIV: 508-512


Our final discussion of the Iliad will focus on the human milestones of the last half of the poem: the aristeia of Patroklos (in particular, his killing of Sarpedon and his own death at the hands of Hektor); the arming and aristeia of Achilles, and the death of Hektor; and the extraordinary embassy of Priam, in person, to Achilles' tent to ask for his son's body back.

We will give particular attention to Books 16, 18, 22 and 24. If we have time, we will come back to Book 23 to discuss the funeral games for Patroklos: as you read these, consider what they reveal about the participants (the Greek heroes), and how they may relate, symbolically or thematically, to other parts of the poem.

Keep in mind the "Big Questions" of the poem: can there be any compensation for death? How can "we" (that is, the inhabitants of the poem) live in such a way as to make sense of death? Can grief ever end?

And, now that you have the whole epic at your disposal, look for overall structural techniques. For example: Do you see any parallels/reflections/resonances between the first and second halves of the poem? How about between Book 24 and Book 1? Is there ring composition involved in the way events are distributed and narrated? And so on. If you give these questions serious consideration, you may make some surprising discoveries.

To get an idea of the kind of thing I mean, click here to see a diagram I made of Book I. (Click on the diagram itself to enlarge it; click again to make it smaller.) You'll see I've charted the parallels and reflections that exist in the thematic material of that book alone. Try it with other books, or with the epic as a whole, and see what comes up!

 

 
  Creative Commons License  All the original content on these pages is licensed under a Creative Commons License.  Under this license, you may copy, alter, and redistribute any of the original content on this site to your heart's content, provided that you (a) credit me and/or link back to this page; and (b) allow others to make similarly free use of any work you create that is based on material from these pages. In other words, share the love. You might also like to drop me a line and let me know if you're using my stuff -- it's the nice thing to do!
 
  Home  |  Archived Pages  |  Syllabus  |  Course Info  |  Email Instructor |  Go to Discussion  
  Other Resources  |  Go to the Literature Humanities Homepage at Columbia