The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays

by Laura M. Slatkin

Overview

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 the Iliad. 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 the Iliad. 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674021433
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	06/06/2011
Series:	Hellenic Studies Series , #16
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Laura Slatkin is Professor of Classical Studies at New York University's Gallatin School and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

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 the Iliad.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review - Andrew Sprague

This slender, even modest, volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Iliad by revealing the richness and the complexity of the background from which the poet shaped his narrative.

Classical Journal - Jenny Strauss Clay

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 the Iliad.--Andrew Sprague "Bryn Mawr Classical Review" (3/3/1992 12:00:00 AM)

This slender, even modest, volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Iliad by revealing the richness and the complexity of the background from which the poet shaped his narrative.--Jenny Strauss Clay "Classical Journal"

From the Publisher

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 the Iliad.
— Andrew Sprague

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

This slender, even modest, volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Iliad by revealing the richness and the complexity of the background from which the poet shaped his narrative.
— Jenny Strauss Clay

Classical Journal