The Iliad: A Commentary: Volume 5, Books 17-20

Front Cover
This is Volume Five of the major six-volume Commentary on Homer's Iliad now being prepared under the general editorship of Professor G.S. Kirk. Volumes I and II, published in 1985 and 1990 respectively, were edited by Professor Kirk himself. Like its predecessors, the present volume (the first to be edited by one of Professor Kirk's four collaborators) consists of four introductory essays (including discussions of similes and other features of narrative style) followed by the commentary. The Greek text is not included. This project is the first large-scale commentary on the Iliad for nearly one hundred years, and takes special account of language, style, and thematic structure as well as of the complex social and cultural background to the work.
 

Selected pages

Contents

INTRODUCTION
1
the narrators technique
2
ii Foreshadowing
7
Composition by theme
11
ii Story patterns and neoanalysis
15
iii Anticipation preparation and adaptation
19
Similes
24
i Form
25
Style
42
ii Ring composition
44
iii Metaphor
48
iv Hapax legomena
53
v Rhetorical figures of speech
55
COMMENTARY
61
Book 18
139
Book 19
234

b The long simile
26
ii Connexion of simile and narrative
30
iii The subjectmatter of the similes
34
iv Language and style
37
v Function distribution and arrangement
38
Book 20
286
Index
347
Corrigenda for Volumes I and II
355
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases