Achilles against Time: On the Iliad, Social Networks and Gym

Autori

  • Marko Teodorski Institute for Literature and Art Belgrade, Serbia

Ključne reči:

Achilles, epic poetry, social networks, body politics, gym culture, Homeric studies, literature

Apstrakt

The essay discusses Achilles’ image from the perspective of my fear of aging and midlife body crises. Achilles is the protagonist of the Iliad who remained famous in popular culture by choosing glorious and song-worthy death at the plains of Troy over the long life in obscurity. By discussing his various representations (from the Iliad to contemporary novel, cinema and gyms) I show the profound impact the semantics of Achilles had on my self-perception and body identity. Due to my fear of aging I chose a highly auto-destructive path towards a muscled body, one that deemed me “worthy of praise” (aoidimos) on social networks; similarly, Achilles chose to let his body be destroyed in order to be worthy of the Iliad. Social networks and epic poetry are in the essay considered illusory meta-physical extensions of the body, centered on the rejection of aging and praising of youth.

Reference

Alder, P.A. and P. Alder. 1989. “The Gloried Self: The Aggrandizement and the Constriction of Self.” Social Psychology Quarterly 52 (4): 299–310. https://doi.org/10.2307/2786993

Alvarez, Erick. 2008. Muscle Boys: Gay Gym Culture. New York: The Haworth Press.

Apollonius of Rhodes. 1912. Argonautica, edited and translated by Robert Cooper Seaton. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Burgess, Jonathan S. 2008. The Death and Afterlife of Achilles. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

Couch, H. N. 1943. “Homer on Youth.” The Classical Weekly 36 (18): 211–213. https://doi.org/10.2307/4341679

de Jong, I. J. F. 1987. Narrators and Focalizers. Amsterdam.

Debord, Guy. 1983. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Re.

Debord, Guy. 1988. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. London and New York: Verso.

Douglas, K. and D. Carless. 2009. “Abandoning the Performance Narrative: Two Women’s Stories of Transition from Professional Sport.” Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 21 (2): 213–230. https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200902795109

Edwards, M.W. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Edwards, Mark W. 1991. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume 5, Books 17–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fenik, J. C. 1968. Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad: Studies in the Narrative Techniques of Homeric Battle Descriptions. Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH: Wiesbaden.

Freud, Sigmund. 1981 [1900]. “The Interpretation of Dreams I.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume IV (1900), translated by James Strachey, 1–603. London: The Hogarth Press and Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Freud, Sigmund. 1981 [1939]. “Moses and Monotheism.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXIII (1937–1939), translated by James Strachey, 1–140. London: The Hogarth Press and Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Frieman, Catherine, J. 2017. “Aging Well: Treherne’s ‘Warrior’s Beauty’ Two Decades Later.” European Journal of Archaeology 20 (1): 36–73. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2016.6

Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Garcia Jr., Lorenzo F. “Kleos.” In The Cambridge Guide to Homer, edited by Corinne Ondine Pache, 167–168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Graziosi, B., and J. Haubold. 2005. Homer: The Resonance of Epic. London: Duckworth. Griffin, Jasper. 1980. Homer on Life and Death. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hainsworth, Bryan. 1993. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume 3, Books 9–12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Homer. 1898. The Iliad of Homer. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original, translated by Samuel Butler. London, New York and Bombay: Ballantyne Press.

Homer. 1900. The Odyssey. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original, translated by Samuel Butler. London: A. C. Fifield.

Janko, Richard. 1994. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume 4, Books 13–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kullmann, W. 1960. Die Quellen der Ilias. Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH: Wiesbaden.

Kullmann, W. 1991. “Ergebnisse der motivgeschichtlichen Forschung zu Homer (Neoanalyse).” In Zweihundert Jahre Homer-Forschung, 425–455. Stuttgart: Teubner.

Leaf, Walter, trans. 1900. The Iliad. London: Macmillan.

Loraux, Nicole. 1975. HBH et ANΔPEIA: Deux versions de la mort du combattant athénien. Paris: Ka.

Miller, Madeline. 2011. The Song of Achilles. London, Berlin, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury Press.

Nagy, Gregory. 2013. The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours. Cambridge (Mass.) and London: Harvard University Press.

Niven, Larry and Steven Barns. 1991. Achilles’ Choice. New York: Tor Books.

Peigney, Jocelyne. 1998. “On the Greek Vision of the Human Body.” In Greeks and Romans in the Modern World, edited by Roger-Paul Droit, 211–215. New York: Columbia University Press.

Troy. 2004. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Los Angeles: Warner Bros. Pictures. 2006. DVD.

Plato. 1909. The Symposium of Plato, translated by R. G. Bury. Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons.

Rutherford, R. B. 1982. “Tragic Form and Feeling in the Iliad.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 102: 145–160. https://doi.org/10.2307/631133

Schein, Seth L. 1985. The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer’s Iliad. Berkley: University of California Press.

Simmons, Dan. 2003. Ilium. New York: Harper Voyager.

Simmons, Dan. 2005. Olympos. London: Gollancz.

Slatkin, Laura M. 1995. The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad. Berkley: University of California Press.

Sparkes, A.C., E. Partington and D.H.K. Brown. 2007. “Bodies as Bearers of Value: The Transmission of Jock Culture via the ‘Twelve Commandments’.” Sport, Education and Society 12 (3): 295–316. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573320701464150

Teodorski, Marko. 2016. “Reflection as Commodity: A Short Ethno(historio)graphy of Victorian Mirrors.” Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SASA 64 (1): 121–132. https://doi.org/10.2298/GEI1601121T

Teodorski, Marko. 2017. “Kultura stakla: transcendentalni subjekat na raskršću teksta i materijalne kulture.” Književna istorija 160: 221–245. http://arhiva.knjizevnaistorija.rs/editions/160/teodorski.pdf

Teodorski, Marko. 2021. Textuality and Transcendence. Institute for Literature and Art.

Treherne, Paul. 1995. “The Warrior’s Beauty: The Masculine Body and Self-Identity in Bronze-Age Europe.” Journal of European Archaeology 3 (1): 105–144. https://doi.org/10.1179/096576695800688269

Van Nortwick, Thomas. 1995. “Achilles in Oberlin: The Hero Story as Metaphor.” Classical Bulletin 71 (2): 125. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1296277954

Van Nortwick, Thomas. 1996. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Hero’s Journey. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Van Nortwick, Thomas. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture. London: Preager.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre. 1991. “A ‘Beautiful Death’ and the Disfigured Corpse in Homeric Epic.” In Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays, edited by Froma I. Zeitlin, 50–74. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre. 1991a. “Panta Kala: From Homer to Simonides.” In Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays. Edited by Froma I. Zeitlin, 84–91. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Whitman, Cedric Hubbell. 1958. Homer and the Heroic Tradition: Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

Willcock, M. M. 1977. “Ad hoc Invention in the Iliad.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 18: 41–53. https://doi.org/10.2307/311110

Willcock, M. M. 1978. “Homer, the Individual Poet.” LCM 3: 11–18.

Wills, David. 1995. Prosthesis. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Yamagata, Naoko. 1993. “Young and Old in Homer and in ‘Heike Monogatari’.” Greece & Rome 40 (1): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S001738350002252X

##submission.downloads##

Objavljeno

2022-11-18

Broj časopisa

Sekcija

Original scientific paper