Narrative desire and the limits of lament in Homer

• Autores: Tyler Flatt
• Localización: Classical journal, ISSN 0009-8353, Vol. 112, Nº 4, 2017, págs. 385-404
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This article demonstrates how a particular type of narrative formula in Homer—the pivotal counterfactual—creates in contexts of lamentation a suggestive correspondence between the desire to mourn and the desire to hear (and relate) more narrative. The various other structural functions of such formulae are best understood in relation to this more fundamental effect. Pivotal counterfactuals that express a longing for extended mourning occur in thematically parallel locations in the Iliad and Odyssey, and significantly enhance the power of subsequent formal lamentations while reinforcing the narrative teleology of both poems.