The Madness of Epic. Reading insanity from Homer to Statius. (Oxford Classical Monographs). This item is unavailable.The Madness of Epic. Reading insanity from Homer to Statius. (Oxford Classical Monographs)

Madness plays a vital role in many ancient epics: not only do characters go mad, but madness also often occupies a central thematic position in the texts. In this book, Debra Hershkowitz examines from a variety of theoretical angles the representation and poetic function of madness in Greek and Latin epic from Homer through the Flavians, including individual chapters devoted to the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Bellum Civile, and Statius' Thebaid. The study also addresses the difficulty of defining madness, and discusses how each epic explores this problem in a different way, finding its own unique way of conceptualizing madness. Epic madness interacts with ancient models of madness, but also, even more importantly, with previous representations of madness in the literary tradition. Likewise, the reader's response to epic madness is influenced by both ancient and modern views of madness, as well as by an awareness of intertextuality.

Rich fare ... Hershkowitz has the original Greek and Latin texts at her intellectual fingertips. (Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.)

In this enormously learned first book, the author presents a series of essays on madness ... The study is a revision of the author's 1995 dissertation, and she appears to have read everything on the subject in the original languages. If this becomes the standard for dissertations, the next generation is in trouble. (The Historian)