The ancient Greek hero in 24 hours /
Nagy, Gregory,author.
"The ancient Greeks' concept of "the hero" was very different from what we understand by the term today, Gregory Nagy argues--and it is only through analyzing their historical contexts that we can truly understand Achilles, Odysseus, Oedipus, and Herakles. In Greek tradition, a hero was a human, male or female, of the remote past, who was endowed with superhuman abilities by virtue of being descended from an immortal god. Despite their mortality, heroes, like the gods, were objects of cult worship. Nagy examines this distinctively religious notion of the hero in its many dimensions, in texts spanning the eighth to fourth centuries BCE: the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey; tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; songs of Sappho and Pindar; and dialogues of Plato. All works are presented in English translation, with attention to the subtleties of the original Greek, and are often further illuminated by illustrations taken from Athenian vase paintings. The fifth-century BCE historian Herodotus said that to read Homer is to be a civilized person. In twenty-four installments, based on the Harvard University course Nagy has taught and refined since the late 1970s, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours offers an exploration of civilization's roots in the Homeric epics and other Classical literature, a lineage that continues to challenge and inspire us today." -- Publisher's description.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 695-712) and index.
The Homeric Iliad and the Glory of the Unseasonal Hero -- Achilles as Epic Hero and the Idea of Total Recall in Song -- Achilles and the Poetics of Lament -- Achilles as Lyric Hero in the Songs of Sappho and Pindar -- When Mortals Become 'Equal' to Immortals: Death of a Hero, Death of a Bridegroom -- Patroklos as the Other Self of Achilles -- The Sign of the Hero in Visual and Verbal Art -- The Psychology of the Hero's Sign in the Homeric Iliad -- The Return of Odysseus in the Homeric Odyssey -- The Mind of Odysseus in the Homeric Odyssey -- Blessed are the Heroes: the Cult Hero in Homeric Poetry and Beyond -- The Cult Hero as an Exponent of Justice in Homeric Poetry and Beyond -- A Crisis in Reading the World of Heroes -- Longing for a Hero: a Retrospective -- What the Hero 'Means' -- Heroic Aberration in the Agamemnon od Aeschylus -- Looking Beyond the Cult Hero in the Libation Bearers and the Eumenides of Aeschylus -- Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus and the Power of the Cult Hero in Death -- Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus and Heroic Pollution -- The Hero as Mirror of Men's and Women's Experiences in the Hippolytus of Euripides -- The Hero's Agony in the Bacchae of Euripides -- The Living Word I: Socrates in Plato's Apology of Socrates -- The Living Word II: More on Plato's Socrates in the Phaedo -- The Hero as Savior.
"The ancient Greeks' concept of "the hero" was very different from what we understand by the term today, Gregory Nagy argues--and it is only through analyzing their historical contexts that we can truly understand Achilles, Odysseus, Oedipus, and Herakles. In Greek tradition, a hero was a human, male or female, of the remote past, who was endowed with superhuman abilities by virtue of being descended from an immortal god. Despite their mortality, heroes, like the gods, were objects of cult worship. Nagy examines this distinctively religious notion of the hero in its many dimensions, in texts spanning the eighth to fourth centuries BCE: the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey; tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; songs of Sappho and Pindar; and dialogues of Plato. All works are presented in English translation, with attention to the subtleties of the original Greek, and are often further illuminated by illustrations taken from Athenian vase paintings. The fifth-century BCE historian Herodotus said that to read Homer is to be a civilized person. In twenty-four installments, based on the Harvard University course Nagy has taught and refined since the late 1970s, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours offers an exploration of civilization's roots in the Homeric epics and other Classical literature, a lineage that continues to challenge and inspire us today." -- Publisher's description.
Greek literature
Heroes in literature.