Orality, Fluid Textualization and Interweaving Themes
Orality,Fluid Textualization and Interweaving Themes. Some Remarks on the Doloneia: Magical Horses from Night to Light and Death to Life Anton Bierl * Introduction: Methodological Reflection The Doloneia, Book 10 of the Iliad, takes place during the night and its events have been long interpreted as unheroic exploits of ambush and cunning. First the desperate Greek leader Agamemnon cannot sleep and initiates a long series of wake-up calls as he seeks new information and counsel. When the Greeks finally send out Odysseus and Diomedes, the two heroes encounter the Trojan Dolon who intends to spy on the Achaeans. They hunt him down, and in his fear of death, Dolon betrays the whereabouts of Rhesus and his Thracian troops who have arrived on scene late. Accordingly, the focus shifts from the endeavor to obtain new knowledge to the massacre of enemies and the retrieval of won- drous horses through trickery and violence. * I would like to thank Antonios Rengakos for his kind invitation to Thessalo- niki, as well as the editors of this volume, Franco Montanari, Antonios Renga- kos and Christos Tsagalis. Besides the Conference Homer in the 21st Century,I gave other versions of the paper at Brown (2010) and Columbia University (CAM, 2011). I am grateful to the audiences for much useful criticism, partic- ularly to Casey Dué, Deborah Boedeker, Marco Fantuzzi, Pura Nieto Hernan- dez, David Konstan, Kurt Raaflaub and William Harris for stimulating conver- sations. Only after the final submission of this contribution, Donald E. Lavigne granted me insight into his not yet published manuscript “Bad Kharma: A ‘Fragment’ of the Iliad and Iambic Laughter” in which he detects iambic reso- nances in the Doloneia, and I received a reference to M.F.
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