Homer and the Question of Strife from Erasmus to Hobbes / / Jessica Wolfe.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2015
• VerfasserIn: Wolfe, Jessica,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

From antiquity through the Renaissance, Homer's epic poems - the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the various mock-epics incorrectly ascribed to him - served as a lens through which readers, translators, and writers interpreted contemporary conflicts. They looked to Homer for wisdom about the danger and the value of strife, embracing his works as a mythographic shorthand with which to describe and interpret the era's intellectual, political, and theological struggles.Homer and the Question of Strife from Erasmus to Hobbes elegantly exposes the ways in which writers and thinkers as varied as Erasmus, Rabelais, Spenser, Milton, and Hobbes presented Homer as a great champion of conflict or its most eloquent critic. Jessica Wolfe weaves together an exceptional range of sources, including manuscript commentaries, early modern marginalia, philosophical and political treatises, and the visual arts. Wolfe's transnational and multilingual study is a landmark work in the study of classical reception that has a great deal to offer to anyone examining the literary, political, and intellectual life of early modern Europe.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: Homer and the Question of Strife -- Chapter One. Homer, Erasmus, and the Problem of Strife -- Chapter Two. The Remedy of Contraries: Melanchthon, Rabelais, and Epic Parody -- Chapter Three. Spenser, Homer, and the Mythography of Strife -- Chapter Four. Chapman's Ironic Homer -- Chapter Five. The Razor's Edge: Homer, Milton, and the Problem of Deliberation -- Chapter Six. Hobbes's Homer and the Idols of the Agora -- Epilogue: The Homeric Contest from Vico to Arendt -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index