LITERATURE, LINGUISTICS & CRITICISM | CRITICAL ESSAY Dearness and death in the Iliad Eric Cullhed Cogent Arts & Humanities (2019), 6: 1686803 Page 1 of 16 Cullhed, Cogent Arts & Humanities (2019), 6: 1686803 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2019.1686803 LITERATURE, LINGUISTICS & CRITICISM | CRITICAL ESSAY Dearness and death in the Iliad Eric Cullhed1* Abstract: Readers have often pointed out that representations of dying warriors in the Iliad, despite the impersonal, unreflective, heterodiegetic form of narration, are Received: 02 July 2019 typically suffused with a certain pathos. What do we mean by “pathos” in this Accepted: 25 October 2019 First Published: 31 October 2019 context? It is argued that we are referring to a group of distinguishable emotions related to affiliative attachment, elicited by a number of recurring motifs or situa- *Corresponding author: Eric Cullhed, Swedish Collegium for Advanced tion types. Characters perceived as dear and as embodying dear principles are Study and Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, vulnerable, suffer and die, eliciting tenderness, compassion and grief, but also being Uppsala, Sweden moved and poignancy. Conceptualizations and expressions of these emotions in the E-mail:
[email protected] Homeric text are discussed. It is further argued that the recurrent appeals to these Reviewing editor: Anezka Kuzmicova, Stockholms emotions throughout the poem cannot be defended against the charge of senti- Universitet, Sweden mentality by merely referring to the “noble restraint” manifested by the narrator’s Additional information is available at dispassionate tone in this context. The ruptured affiliative bonds that form the basis the end of the article for this pathos are not contemplated in an isolated, undisturbed fashion, but they are crucially presented as existing in opposition to other kinds of affective motiva- tions that push and pull the Homeric heroes in other directions.