Homer's Iliad

and the Problem of Force

Beginning with the work of Simone Weil and Bruno Snell, the topic of force has long remained a problem of interpretation for readers of Homer’s Iliad. This book therefore offers the first full-scale treatment of the language of force in the Iliad from both philological and philosophical perspectives. Each chapter explores the question of Iliadic force by way of its reception in the French structuralist tradition and evaluates those receptions through contextualized poetic readings. By combining philological and philosophical perspectives, this book demonstrates that each term for force in the Iliad gives expression to distinct relations between self and “other,” while each utterance on force also calls into question the very relations that it seeks to establish. Thus, the very topic of force allows us to reconsider what it means to be a human subject in Homeric poetry.