Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation

by Ruby Blondell

Overview

Ancient Greek culture is pervaded by a profound ambivalence regarding female beauty. It is an awe-inspiring, supremely desirable gift from the gods, essential to the perpetuation of a man's name through reproduction; yet it also grants women terrifying power over men, posing a threat inseparable from its allure. The myth of Helen is the central site in which the ancient Greeks expressed and reworked their culture's anxieties about erotic desire. Despite the passage of three millennia, contemporary culture remains almost obsessively preoccupied with all the power and danger of female beauty and sexuality that Helen still represents. Yet Helen, the embodiment of these concerns for our purported cultural ancestors, has been little studied from this perspective. Such issues are also central to contemporary feminist thought.

Helen of Troy engages with the ancient origins of the persistent anxiety about female beauty, focusing on this key figure from ancient Greek culture in a way that both extends our understanding of that culture and provides a useful perspective for reconsidering aspects of our own. Moving from Homer and Hesiod to Sappho, Aeschylus, and Euripides, Ruby Blondell offers a fresh examination of the paradoxes and ambiguities that Helen embodies. In addition to literary sources, Blondell considers the archaeological record, which contains evidence of Helen's role as a cult figure, worshipped by maidens and newlyweds. The result is a compelling new interpretation of this alluring figure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190263539
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Ruby Blondell is Professor of Classics at the University of Washington.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Preface
1. The Problem of Female Beauty
2. Helen, Daughter of Zeus
3. Self-Blame and Self-Assertion: the Iliad
4. Happily Ever After? The Odyssey
5. Refractions of Homer's Helen: Archaic Lyric
6. Behind the Scenes: Aeschylus' Oresteia
7. Spartan Woman and Spartan Goddess: Herodotus
8. Playing Defense: Gorgias' Encomium of Helen
9. Enter Helen: Euripides' Trojan Women
10. Two-Faced Helen: the Helen of Euripides
11. Helen MacGuffin: Isocrates
Epilogue
Bibliographical Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The face that launched a thousand ships has inspired just as many—if not more—stories and interpretations of what exactly happened between Helen and Paris, and how it drove Troy to war. Even today, third-wave feminists, postfeminist intellectuals, and contemporary pop culture engage with the enduring reputation of Helen. In this scholarly work, Blondell (The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues) casts the real Helen by the wayside, focusing instead on the ways in which the mythical beauty has been depicted in Greek literature, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, Sappho’s poetry, the tragedy Agamemnon, and Herodotus’s Histories. The University of Washington classicist’s primary concern, expounded upon in thematic chapters, is how these stories depicted, promoted, and transformed ideals of beauty and female agency. This is a fine work of scholarship, but it has limited attraction for a general readership—Blondell declines to connect with modern-day interpretations, though it’s clear she isn’t a hermit of the ivory tower: chapter epigraphs comprise snippets from pop culture, such as a few lines from the Eagles’ song “Lyin’ Eyes.” In tracing her development, it would’ve been interesting to see how the Helen of today holds up to the Helen of old. 19 b&w illus. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"the book is a good survey of Helen in Greek literature and a decent introduction to Helen for undergraduate Classics students, but is a bit thin for those seeking more advanced, in-depth analysis." — Stephanie L. Budin, Collingswood, New Jersey, Journal of the American Oriental Society

"These brief summaries do not begin to do justice to the subtle twists and turns of Blondell's analysis, but I hope that they at least give an idea of the kinds of issues she deals with repeatedly throughout this challenging and rewarding book. While the absence of the Greek texts and the traditional scholarly apparatus is occasionally frustrating, I would not hesitate to recommend this book either to an advanced undergraduate or to a professional scholar. In fact, I have already done so." —Deborah Lyons, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"This excellent volume takes the reader on a tour with Helen of Troy, as she journeys from the Archetype (Pandora) through her complex identities in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Oresteia, the lyric poets, Herodotus' Histories, Gorgias' Encomium of Helen, Euripides' Trojan Women and Helen, and finally Isocrates' Encomium of Helen. The book is descriptive in its focus, and shows that Helen, 'who is a concept, not a person' (p. xi), occupied roles that are important both in themselves and also for understanding the works in question. ... [Blondell] has achieved a miracle of lucid, useful and responsible accessibility. This jargon and footnote free volume will benefit scholars and students in classics, the humanities and beyond." —The Classical Review

"Blondell's stimulating and provocative book demonstrates how Helen is 'an ever-refreshing screen for the projection of ideas and ideals about beauty, women, sex and power.' Demonized, idolized, allegorized, or humanized, Helen of Troy remains no woman and every woman." —Bookslut

"A compelling new portrait of the most famous femme fatale in history as she appears in Greek myth and literature." —Publishers Weekly

"Readers need not be scholars of Greek poetry and culture to appreciate this engaging look at an epic tale with modern resonance." —Booklist

"If you have an appreciation for the classics or even just strong feminine roles, you will want to pick this book up. It will easily become a favorite amongst the rest of your library for years to come." —citybookreview.com

"An entertaining and lively narrative...." —Library Journal

"An insightful book, filled with salacious tales of morality that the ancient Greeks did better than anyone since, Blondell's Helen of Troy is a real beauty." —Clifford Cunningham, Sun News Miami

"A marvelously comprehensive look at Helen of Troy and her interpretations—literary, dramatic, and historical—through the ages. Every dimension of the myth of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world and immortal in memory, is explored and analyzed. It leaves you awed and enlightened." —Margaret George, author of Helen of Troy and The Memoirs of Cleopatra

"Helen's face launched not only a thousand ships but also thousands of texts and artworks: Blondell's lucid, learned, but light-handed study shows why." —Glenn Most, University of Chicago

"A broad, subtle, and beautifully-written study that deserves a large and varied readership. Combining shrewd analysis with lightly-worn expertise, Blondell shows how Greek culture turned again and again to the myth of Helen to confront the disquieting power of female beauty." —Sheila Murnaghan, University of Pennsylvania

"Blondell has written a rich and penetrating study of the Helen myth in the Greek world."
—New Republic

"This book is a fine demonstration of the way in which textual accounts of a Greek legendary icon can be probed in depth to reveal nuances of cultural history that could easily be overlooked. While it is no surprise that a study of Helen should uncover ways in which the masculine agenda of patriarchal Greece was confirmed, Blondell has also exposed the often self-serving and illogical measures taken by Greek writers to accomplish this. She does this with a freshness often quickened by humour" —Phoenix

From the Publisher

As one of the central characters of Greek legend, Helen of Troy makes an ideal subject for an examination of Greek attitudes toward women, beauty, and erotic desire. Blondell (classics, Univ. of Washington) looks at the reception and significance of Helen in Greek epic, poetry, drama, and history. This examination does not consider Helen as a historical personage, as does Bettany Hughes's Helen of Troy, but it takes as a given that to each writer Helen represented something real. This reality was a woman depicted as, by turns, "beautiful evil," a tragic heroine, deeply misunderstood, or a figure for ironical sophistry, with the role of self-control as a virtue particularly tied to matters of chastity as a central theme throughout. How each writer adapted Helen's story indicates something about how that person and that time perceived a woman's place and proper behavior. VERDICT Blondell makes a convincing case for the continued importance of Helen to modern sensibilities as feminism struggles with issues of femininity. An entertaining and lively narrative that will be of interest to scholars while still accessible to general readers.—Margaret Heller, Dominican Univ. Lib., River Forest, IL

Library Journal