Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector.

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Einband leicht berieben und besto�n, sonst guter Zustand / Binding slightly rubbed and scuffed, otherwise in good conditition. - PREFACE Wilamowitz� book on Homer grew out of the First World War; mine (to compare small things with great) out of two weeks� jury service in the Cook County Criminal Court building. Like him I felt the need to "submerge myself in the depths of a true masterpiece�; every day I took with me to Twenty-sixth and California an india-paper Homer. There were no cases to hear and nothing to do; we spent our days sitting at long tables, a room full of silent men. It was like being in prison, except that they let us go home at night. I was thrown, as they say, "on my own resources�; I went back to the book I knew best. There I slowly read and considered, not the entire Iliad, but the story of Hector, which I saw for the first time as a self-contained and partly detachable whole. As I thought, about Hector, my affection for him grew. I found in him a martyr to loyalties, a witness to the things of this world, a hero ready to die for the precious imperfections of ordinary life. I became Hector�s partisan; I felt he had been neglected by the critics, unjustly shaded by the glamour of Achilles.1 I saw his story as that of an admirable man who falls into error without ceasing to be admirable and who dies a death which is tragic because we find it inevitable and in some sense his own fault, but undeserved. For the first time I thought that I understood Aristotle�s praise of the story of such a hero as the best kind of tragic plot. I determined to write something about, and in praise of, Hector and Homer. The present book thus grew out of an interest in, and even perhaps an identification with, one hero. As the book has grown, it has become less personal. I found myself working from part to whole and from text to context. As I worked outward from the center, I found that around Hector�s story I could cluster and sort impressions and observations accumulated through the years. I have avoided involvement in the Homeric Question. My premises are broadly Unitarian;2 for me, as for others, the Homeric Question has become the question of Homer�s sources, and if compelled to commit myself I should be inclined to favor the conception of the monumental composer as a dictating oral poet, but I have not argued these premises.