Short on Heroics’

Jason in the Argonautica

Bibliographic Data

ID9296290
AuthorsR L Hunter (0000-0002-3079-1320, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, corresponding author)
Year1988
Volume38
Issue2
Pages436-453
Publication date1988-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Classical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-8388 • E-ISSN: 1471-6844
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0009838800037058
OpenAlexW2086738872
LanguageEN
Citations received47
References cited19

‘Jason...chosen leader because his superior declines the honour, subordinate to his comrades, except once, in every trial of strength, skill, or courage, a great warrior only with the help of magical charms, jealous of honour but incapable of asserting it, passive in the face of crisis, timid and confused before trouble, tearful at insult, easily despondent, gracefully treacherous in his dealings with the love-sick Medea but cowering before her later threats and curses, coldly efficient in the time-serving murder of an unsuspecting child ( sic ), reluctant even in marriage.’ So Carspecken put the case against Jason's heroism. In the face of such an indictment, Lawall's plea in mitigation, ‘it must be admitted that [Jason] often reveals the qualities of a true gentleman’, seems somehow inadequate. Criticism since Carspecken has found various overlapping categories for Jason which both take account of the earlier negative judgements and preserve the centrality of his ‘personality’ and character in the poem: Jason is the quiet diplomat who works through consensus rather than force, his is a heroism of sex-appeal, he is an anti-hero, the embodiment of Sceptic ‘suspension of judgement’, or, alternatively, he is ‘one of us’, credible and lifelike. Carspecken himself tried a different tack: the poem is concerned not with individual heroism but with the heroism of the group (cf. 1.1, 4.1773–81)

Aesthetics · Art · Character (mathematics · Courage · Criticism · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept · HERO · Honour · Indictment · Insult · Judgement · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Skepticism · Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology

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