Mortal Loss and Epic Compensation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23428477 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Lynn-George (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1988 |
| Pages | 153-229 |
| Publication date | 1988-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Epos Word, Narrative and the Iliad (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/978-1-349-07335-1_3 |
| OpenAlex | W2485054330 |
| ISBN | 9781349073351 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
The Iliad affirms the power of poetry to confer kleos. From this position immortal fame is a possibility in poetry, the hero's certainty of recompense for the sacrifice of life; premature death is balanced by the promise of a form of immortal life. It might also be stated that the Iliad's power as poetry was to unsettle this very definition of its function. It was as if the simple certainties of celebration were resituated within a more indeterminate realm, where the assurance of compensation and the sense of total loss coexisted without always being reconciled; where a confidence in indefinite fame did not always balance an inconsolable awareness of finality; and where the very possibility of any equivalence in the structure of exchange of life for kleos could be questioned in the insistence on the enormity of the stake. In this more uncertain realm, where forms of recompense could be revoked, the risk denied reward, the sanctioned sacrifice of life could be seen as a gesture of pure expenditure incommensurate with any guarantee of exchange.KeywordsNarrative StructurePolished StoneNarrative ModeBook VIIIImmortal LifeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Art · Certainty · Compensation (psychology) · EPIC · Epistemology · HERO · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Realm · Sacrifice · Theology · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
|---|