Title: Turning
Description: One of the few works to apply features of contemporary philosophy to the interpretation of ancient Greek texts, Turning analyzes the representation of persuasion in pre-Platonic texts, particularly Homer's Iliad. It demonstrates how essential persuasion was in almost every relation between mortals and between mortals and gods in early Greek texts.

While being reduced to a mere psychological phenomenon by later Greek philosophy - reduced to the practice and study of rhetoric - persuasion was, for the early Greeks, a pre-ontological "force" associated with a turning toward presence. Michael Naas's work approaches the "critique of presence" in that it tries to articulate a notion - persuasion, turning - that cannot be squarely located within metaphysics.
Subjects: Achilles (Greek mythology) in literature, Ancient Rhetoric, Greek Epic poetry, History, History and criticism, Literature and the war, Persuasion (Rhetoric), Philosophy, Ancient, in literature, Theory, Trojan War, Homer, Epic poetry, history and criticism, Philosophy in literature, Rhetoric, ancient, In literature
People: Homer
Time periods: To 1500