The Poer Of Thetis And Selected Essays (hellenic Studies Series) [Paperback]

Laura Slatkin's influential and widely admired book, here published in a second edition together with six additional essays, explores the superficially minor role of Thetis in theIliad. Highly charged allusions reverberate through the narrative and establish a constellation of themes that link the poem to other traditions. Slatkin uncovers alternative traditions about the power of Thetis and shows how an awareness of those myths brings a far greater understanding of Thetis's place in the thematic structure of theIliad. The six additional essays included in this volume--some of them classics, some never before published--cover a broad range of topics in the study of the Greek Epic: the workings of genre in Hesiod and Homer; the poetics of exchange; and the nature of enmity and friendship. The volume also includes a study of the Hesiodic Catalog of Women and reflections on particular heroes, such as Diomedes and Odysseus.In reading the silences, the aural equivalent of the 'spaces on the page,' Slatkin is both careful and bold: she combs with care through the language of Homer, but is not afraid to make bold inferences and associations...The accumulation of suggestive evidence, the logical progression of her argument, and the consistency of her explanations coalesce into a book that has changed the way I read theIliad.This slender, even modest, volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of theIliadby revealing the richness and the complexity of the background from which the poet shaped his narrative.In reading the silences, the aural equivalent of the 'spaces on the page,' Slatkin is both careful and bold: she combs with care through the language of Homer, but is not afraid to make bold inferences and associations...The accumulation of suggestive evidence, the logical progression of her argument, and the consistency of her explanations coalesce into a book that has changed the way I read theIliad.Slatkins influentlÃ$