2016.05.05 | By John C. Franklin One or more versions of the lost epic Kypria, which came to serve as a prequel to the Iliad, must have contained wandering adventures set in the eastern Mediterranean, deriving from a multiform traditional background that can be partially reconstructed from scattered traces. Read more
2016.05.03 | By Leonard Muellner The ritual roles of Helen in the performance of poetry for lament and initiation, both within the epic and in Spartan cult outside it, complement and enrich the picture of Helen’s poetic perspective in the 6th rhapsody of the Iliad. Read more
2016.05.03 | By Guy Smoot Linguists have argued over the etymology of Helen, proposing various derivations on the basis of correspondences between compatible roots and specific aspects of her myth. What if they were all correct (for the most part)? Read more
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
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
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
