Homère - The choice of Achilles : the ideology of figure in the epic

This book has been so long in the writing that it has often seemed to me to achieve its own version of the unending iterative cyclicality that I describe as characteristic of epic figuration. Thanks are due, then, first to Thomas M. Greene, Margaret K. Ferguson, Gordon Williams, and Lowry Nelson, Jr., who read and commented on the dissertation from which my book eventually emerged. Thomas Greene has read several later parts of the book with his usual thoughtful care, and has given me valued advice and support throughout my many rewritings. Id like also to thank John Hollander for his crucial interventions at several stages of revision, and for the encouragement he gave me at the moments in which my epic task seemed insurmountable. I owe a special debt to Harry Berger, Jr., and to the anonymous Classics readers for Stanford University Press whose judicious suggestions about revisions gave the book a new life. They pointed me to several scholarly works that helped me over significant difficulties in my conceptualization. I also thank Helen Tartar, my editor at Stanford Press, for her faith in the book when it most counted; Ellen F. Smith, the project editor, for her help and patience; and Nancy Atkinson, for her insightful copyediting.

My students at Yaleespecially Bianca Calabresi, Rachel Eisler, and Sarah Bankswill recognize their contribution to this work, especially in the Spenser chapters. My research assistants each deserve special thanks. Sarah Mace worked long and hard with the Iliad chapter, helping me to tighten the argument and trying her best to dissuade me from my reading of the end of the poem. Her intelligent criticism and assistance were invaluable. Nina Revoyr performed a similar service for the rest of the manuscript, struggling at times with my prose style, and questioning me insistently about the place of women (and the politics of misogyny) in my argument. Bill Johnson-Gonzalez very kindly helped me verify the accuracy of the Cervantes bibliography and notes. Ambreen Hai worked long and patiently to produce the index.

My friends in the study group on ideology, resistance, and cultural formHelen Siu, James C. Scott, William Kelly, Deborah Davis-Friedmann, Jean-Christophe Agnew, and Keith Luriahave all helped sharpen my understanding of how everyday, often hidden or unacknowledged acts of resistance to cultural domination can make possible a cultural or political criticism of surprising range and power. Though they may not recognize their contributions here, our concerns with what lived individual experience might tell us and with what the individual might understand and value in larger ideological and political struggles resurfaces in my treatment of the representation of action in the epic as an aspect of these poems that deserves to be listened to in its own right.

I wish also to thank several other friends and colleagues who have contributed to this project: Mark Rose and James Nohrnberg, who first taught me to read Spenser; Ellen Peel, whose postcard with a bibliographical suggestion sent me in several good directions; Michael Cadden, who provided essential assistance on a moments noticeour many debates over the years have always kept me rethinking questions that I believed I had answered; Jonathan Freedman, who affectionately urged me to be more polemical; Alicia Fernndez, whose questioning of whether theories of ideology lead to social change helped me see more clearly the challenge to heroic values that the epic can provide; Eugenia DeLamotte and Shira Wolosky, whose friendship and example have taught me much about what it means to be an intellectual; and Sheila Murnaghan and Mihoko Suzuki, each of whom read drafts of the most recent version of this booktheir careful comments, and the special comradeship they offered, have meant a great deal.

Acknowledging help and friendship has its own rhetorical form and generic constraints, and it remains for me to reassure my readers that none of these people is responsible for the errors in this book. While in this genre the name may serve as a trope to invoke the full authority of the person cited, I must demystify that trope in the moment of employing itto some extent at least. Many of my readers and assistants tried hard to argue me out of what they viewed as interpretive errors that have nonetheless somehow found their way back into the text. For the return of these suppressed or challenged readings, and for any other errors, I must take full responsibility.

Finally, my parents and family have lived with this project for many years with warmth and encouragement and only occasional moments of bafflement. I owe them thanks for their support, emotional and otherwiseincluding the providing of several lovely, cool places away from New Haven in which to write. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my husband, Jacques Lezra, who read each of the versions of the book, debated the theoretical questions they raised, and encouraged me to believe that the project was worth doing. It is simply true to say that without him this book would not exist.