2018.08.29 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The anguish of a replicant named Roy in the story of Blade Runner is only one example of the unseasonality suffered by artificial humans. I explore another example here, where a replicant named Rachael experiences the shock of being told that she is not human. Unlike Roy, who knew all along that he was not human, Rachael never knew. Once she is told that… Read more
2018.08.29 | By Gregory Nagy §0. For studying the ancient Greek hero, I think that the kinds of things we see in the storytelling of films and other such contemporary media can be “good to think with.” The expression I have just used here derives from a commonly-used paraphrase of wording once used by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in his book Le Totémisme aujourd’hui (1962). He was referring to… Read more
2018.08.10 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The picture on the cover makes me think about heroes, athletes, and poetry. What we see is an Amazon, riding on horseback, engaged in mortal combat with a male adversary. As I have shown in previous postings about Amazons, especially in my comments on Antiope, queen of the Amazons, in Classical Inquiries 2017.10.18, these female warriors were considered to be not only heroes but… Read more
2018.08.03 | By Gregory Nagy In the posting for 2018.06.21, I highlighted a painterly vision in the narrative of Pausanias about the erotic passion felt by Phaedra for Hippolytus. In that vision, Phaedra is viewing Hippolytus exercising naked. And the agent of the vision is the goddess Aphrodite. In the present posting, for 2018.08.03, I compare another painterly vision—this time, in the poetry of Euripides. In this vision, Phaedra is… Read more
2018.07.27 | By Gregory Nagy A sampling of comments on the Iliad and Odyssey includes an attempt of mine to analyze a scene in Iliad 14 where Hērā has a sexual encounter with Zeus on the heights of Mount Ida. In my comments on the wording of the goddess at the moment when she initiates her encounter with the god, at verses 200–210, I argue that this wording “derives from… Read more
2015.10.29 | By Gregory Nagy In this posting, I show the thinking that went into a self-evaluation exercise that I had put together for “Heroes X.” In putting together the wording for this exercise as I wrote it in 2013, I was thinking of things that never made it into the book version. So, my thinking about Iliad 18.54–56 is being shared here in public for the very first time. Read more
