The Iliad: Structure, Myth, and Meaning. By BRUCE LOUDEN. Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Pp. vii + 337. Cloth, $55.00. ISBN
0–8018–8280–X.
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[Projected: CJ 103.3: 306–9]
Although we comparativists hate to admit this, the identification of
literary parallels is an undertaking that can run from shamanism to
science, and the line between is often blurry. This is partially a matter
of necessity—if the parallels were obvious, we would not still need to
point them out after all these centuries. It takes a specialized instinct
to home in on unnoticed verbal or structural similarities, and the
unfortunate fact is that instincts are often wrong, and that the process
(and its results) can be disconcertingly opaque to outsiders. In terms of
credibility, therefore, the search for literary parallels falls somewhere
between dowsing and truffle-sniffing: there are jackpots out there, but
crackpots as well, and all too often it is unclear why someone is digging
so hard in a spot—until they pull up a delicious treat. The process should
not be paranormal, but the cues the comparativist responds to may lie below
the radar of readers unfamiliar with both canons, and may be difficult to
clarify and quantify.
Making the transition from a powerful yet indefinable understanding of two
texts to a compelling exposition of the relationship between them is
difficult. Comparative work must have a leg in two fields, and it demands
that separate disciplines be brought into alignment in such a way that
their shared qualities are highlighted without being dwarfed by their
differences. This brings a host of questions: Should one conduct the
discourse in the language of field A or field B? And how much of each
narrative should one recap, when too much will bore half the audience, but
too little will frustrate the rest? That the process is difficult from
start to finish is demonstrated by the paucity of book-length offerings. It
is therefore a pleasure to welcome Bruce Louden’s The Iliad: Structure,
Myth, and Meaning, a companion to his 1999 book on the structure of the
Odyssey. Though only half the volume deals directly with borrowing and
cultural influence, all of it addresses issues that are as fundamental to
the comparative process as they are to understanding Homer in isolation.
The complaints and concerns about each part that follow should accordingly
be taken as evidence of the engagement and interest Louden’s work provokes.
Chapters 1–4 treat L.’s vision of a structural framework upon which the
Iliad is composed and represent an attempt to answer fundamental questions
about the nature of the individual units of which oral poetry is composed.
In L.’s analysis, the Iliad has three major movements: two roughly
analogous 20-part segments (expressions of the “principal narrative
pattern”) in Books 4–7 and 20–4, bracketing a “parodic” or inverted version
of the pattern in Books 8 and 11–17. The motifs within the principal
narrative pattern concern the cycle of activity leading up to and through
one aristeia by a “best of the Acheans,” as Diomedes and Achilles take
their turns in the role. The Books that introduce each iteration of the
cycle (1–2, 9–10, 18–19) are handled separately as an “introductory”
pattern. Finally, motifs from the principal narrative pattern appear in
Book 3 in a reduced form, serving as an “overture.”
That the Iliad divides into three movements has been argued before (as L.
acknowledges, though he draws his divisions differently than his
predecessors), and cross-culturally most tales break into three phases of
action. Beyond this, L.’s analysis is not simple or unencumbered. Without
question, L. has seized on symmetries I had never noticed, and he may have
hit upon a significant chunk of the narrative-generation matrix of the
Iliad. But stripping a complex piece of literature down to a skeleton
requires over-simplifications, glossings-over, substitutions and
acknowledged deviations, and for L.’s reader, absorbing these and their
implications is a slow process. Doubtless, oral poets kept a checklist like
the one L. describes in their minds as they composed, using it as a
template that allowed them to follow the established tale, while remaining
free to elaborate some elements and abbreviate or eliminate others. But
where L. sees the Homeric narrative as something approaching a Near Eastern
cylinder-seal rolling over and over on wet clay, I lean toward a vision of
it as a Hindu mandala, with interlocking rings of meaning, a labyrinth of
forking paths and doublets facing one another at the compass points. Others
may well see a temple frieze of stylized and variable repetition. Within
the larger picture, there can also be disagreement as to what are
significant elements in the narrative, and what is padding or filler; a
pivotal moment in the narrative to some is a throw-away scene in the eyes
of others. In any case, L. has an eagle-eye for philological comparanda,
and a rare willingness to address the poem simultaneously on the large and
the small scale. Whether he has uncovered the poets’ secret compositional
tool, or merely an intriguing set of artifacts of its construction, his
schema is an intriguing exposition of the patterns and variations on a
theme that run through the epics.
The second section of L.’s book (Chapters 5–7) treats a variety of Homeric
themes and elements that seem to have been adopted from Near Eastern
literature. Many of these are dead-on. I require little further convincing
that the Iliad contains some reflex of Old Testa-ment siege myths (pp.
149–54), wrathful gods bringing down an apocalypse on a city (pp. 226–35),
or the NE “one just man” figure (pp. 235–9), or that the Destructive Dream
from Iliad 2 may have ties to similar Old Testament tales (pp. 163–7).
Chapter 7 is also wholly convincing that Athena was shaped in part by
characteristics imported from the Ugaritic goddess Anat (pp. 240–85), and
that Ares may have been similarly shaped by elements originating with Baal
(pp. 251–7).
But while some of the elements L. identifies in Homer may have been
tempered by exposure to Near Eastern tales, there is no getting around the
fact that Indo-European proto-epic is just as likely a source for many of
them. These include divine councils (pp. 207–9), most of the
characteristics of the hero (pp. 167–82), and warrior-priestly-caste
conflict (pp. 158–60). While story-pattern borrowing in the ancient world
was widespread, the epics of Greece have Indo-European ancestors as well,
and when themes or motifs are shared with other Indo-European epics, an
inherited tradition is a more straightforward source than a borrowing. And,
as always, many of these motifs may simply be universal—a quick look at
British history, for example, makes it clear that a poet probably never
needed to look far for inspiration about warrior and priestly caste
conflict.
It is unfortunate that for reasons of space L. was unable to include an
expanded proposal of the path/pattern/timetable of transmission for myths
and story-patterns from the Ancient Near East to Greece (restricting his
discussion to a few paragraphs on pp. 12–13, and another on p. 289). The
ample evidence of contact between Ugarit and Mycenae, both at the height of
their powers between 1400–1200 BCE, is comfortable for Ugaritic borrowings,
but expanded discussion regarding the timeline and nature of transmission
would be interesting and worthwhile. L. also does not systematically
address the import of the various similarities he details between the Iliad
and Old Testament mythology. Particularly welcome would be discussion of
how the similarities came to be; presumably the OT parallels under
consideration are relics of earlier NE literature that survive in no other
form, and that this earlier form was passed to the Greeks as well. While it
is worthwhile to merely note the correspondences, the really difficult work
of putting them into a historical context is a large part of making them
useful to other scholars.
Also welcome would be more discussion of the nature of the contact that led
to the borrowings and its relationship to the possible timelines for
borrowing. It is hard to imagine the cultural transfer required to get
these motifs into Homer as a speedy process, as L. acknowledges (p. 289).
Story-patterns usually evolve slowly, and there is an enormous resistance
to alteration of a beloved tale, particularly when it is bound up with
national identity. But perhaps the process need not always be so slow.
Cultures do not borrow objects or technologies without a powerful innate
attraction towards them: Thailand and India have only had the chili pepper
since the 1500s, but chilis are now the hallmark of their cuisines. Thus it
may have been with the epics. If the Homeric epics retained an
Indo-European element, adopted a Near Eastern one, or incorporated a
folktale, this happened because the poets felt that that element belonged
in the story, and if their audience disagreed, the element would surely
have disappeared again. Understanding how these various threads formed the
version of the Iliad we have will contribute to our understanding not only
of the epic itself, but of the world in which it was shaped, and the
oral-poetic processes that formed it. The Iliad: Structure, Myth, and
Meaning takes us another generous step forward on that path.
EMILY B. WEST
College of St. Catherine
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