Reading Homer Film and Text

These nine new essays on Homer's epics deal not only with major Homeric themes of time (honor), kleos (fame), geras (rewards), the psychology of Homeric warriors, and the re-evaluation of type scenes, but also with Homer's influence on contemporary film. Following the introduction and an essay which sets the historical background for the epics, four essays are devoted to fresh analysis of key passages and themes while another four turn to a discussion of the film 'Troy' and Homer's influence on two other genres of American cinema. The background essay by Shawn Ross, 'Homer as History: Greeks and Others in the Early Iron Age', argues that understanding Homeric epic as the product of a longstanding oral tradition facilitates its use as a source for early Greek history. The next four essays delve into Homer's texts themselves focusing on a number of fresh approaches to the epics. Rick Newton's 'Geras and Guest Gifts in Homer' draws parallels between xeineia (hospitality and guest-gifts) in the Odyssey and geras (gifts from plunder) in the Iliad. John B. Vlahos's 'Homer's Odyssey, Books 19 and 23: Early Recognition: A Solution to the Enigmas of Ivory and Horns, and the Test of the Bed' tackles certain aspects of the Odyssey that have created problems for Homerists since the epics were composed. Scott Richardson's 'Conversation in the Odyssey' focuses on character conversation while Joel Christensen in 'The End of Speeches and Speech's End: Nestor, Diomedes and the telos muthon' turns back to the Iliad and offers a close reading of a crucial passage in Iliad 9 concerning the phrase telos muthon. The second set of four essays turn to film beginning with two contributions on Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. Jonathan S. Burgess's 'Achilles Heel: The Historicism of the Film Troy' finds the film's weakness in its trying to portray a factual Trojan War rather than concentrating on the myth of the Trojan War while Charles C. Chiasson in 'Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen's Troy', observes that the film intertwines the spheres of love and battle, which he finds irreconcilable in the Iliad. In the last two essays on American genre film, Bruce Louden's 'The Odyssey and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life', emphasizes motifs the film shares with the Odyssey, and Kostas Myrsiades' reading of the 1950s' classic western in 'Reading The Gunfighter as Homeric Epic' examines the progress of the warrior through his pursuit of glory and his homecoming by comparing Henry King's The Gunfighter with Homer's two epics.