Helen and her Eidolon

Helen of Troy: Unwomanly in Her Sexuality

2016.05.03 | Darah Vann Helen of Troy is a complex character who transgresses traditional female roles, making her characterization unwomanly to the point of being non-female. Helen is not merely the beauty who passively started the Trojan War, whatever her actual role in her abduction was, but she is also a symbol of the fears and anxieties non-womanly women produced. Read more

Helen of Sparta and her very own Eidolon

2016.05.02 | By Gregory Nagy How do we square the idea of Helen as goddess of Sparta with the idea of Helen of Troy as we see her come to life in the Homeric Iliad? I hope to address this problem here by taking a second look at the idea of Helen’s ‘image-double’, the word for which in Greek was eidōlon. Read more

Helen’s mixed feelings for Alexander in Iliad 3: the cognitive, pragmatic, and emotional significance of third-person pronouns

2016.05.02 | Anna Bonifazi The way in which Helen recalls Alexander at Iliad 3.406–412 contributes a great deal to the cognitive and emotional characterization of the speech, and in particular to the expression of Helen’s mixed feelings towards Alexander. The speech reenactment by the Homeric performer shows a careful choice of third-person pronouns, which contribute to the depiction of Helen’s complex emotionality at that moment of the poem. Read more