Eros, Imitation and the Epic Tradition

By Barbara Pavlock

Barbara Pavlock here illuminates the significance of the erotic in the epic tradition from Alexandrian Greece to the late Renaissance by examining the transformations of two Homeric episodes, Odysseus' encounter with Nausikaa and the night-raid of Odysseus and Diomedes. Asserting that the erotic serves in the epic as a locus of criticism of social values, she traces adaptations in rhetorical devices, in larger structural patterns, and in major generic forms, as in the combination of tragic with epic models.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080142321X
• ISBN13: 9780801423215
• Release Date: February 1990
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"