Iliad, Homer - Robert J. Rabel (essay date 1997)

Robert J. Rabel (essay date 1997)

SOURCE: Rabel, Robert J. “Plot and Point of View in the Iliad.” In Plot and Point of View in the Iliad, pp.1-32. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.

[In the following excerpt, Rabel differentiates between the author of the Iliad and the epic's narrator, commenting on shifting modes of perception in the poem, particularly in relation to its treatment of the heroic code.]

[T]he term point of view refers most directly to visual perspective, the place from which an object is viewed. In the most literal sense of the term, only the Muse(s)-narrator and the characters of the poem have points of view. The poet lacks visual perspectives, as Homer himself acknowledges in his second prooemium in the Iliad, the invocation of the Muses preceding the so-called Catalog of Ships in book 2:

ὑμει̑s γὰρ θεαί ἐστε, πάρεστἐ τε, ἴστἐ τε...

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