https://compactmag.com/article/emily-wilson-s-sack-of-homer
‘A scholar of Homeric Greek might quibble with these choices on semantic grounds, but the deeper issue is that it doesn’t make sense on the story-level to suggest that men who risk death every day and see their fellow warriors dying all around them need help recognizing their own mortality, or to portray men seeking to immortalize their names as big babies terrified of death.’
Thanks. That’s an insightful read. I particularly enjoyed this bit:
“Wilson’s work can, and probably does, successfully advance a radical undertaking of erasing the old myths and writing new ones. This wouldn’t necessarily be ignoble if the process weren’t being obfuscated, but there is something brutal about taking a classic work, rewriting it against its own grain, and then passing it off as true to the original. The scene of the victorious Achilles tying his main opponent Hector’s dead body to the back of his chariot and driving around and around the camp comes to mind.”
I found the general tone of the article, however, quite polite and not harsh at all like this passage.
I was intrigued to find out something about the background of the author of this piece. You can discover it here https://ananthologyofclouds.com/about/.
I find the article facile and superficial. It came as a great surprise to me that anyone who regards themselves as a serious student of literature could write this
But the text’s very blindness to these women’s concerns suggests the opposite. Readings that include outrage over Briseis are external critiques of the original text and don’t represent its intentions. Wilson elides this crucial distinction.
.
Ah well, its a point of view I suppose.