Leonard Muellner
Last updated at
March 30, 2020, 2:59 p.m.
{"blocks":[{"key":"cl7r0","text":"This line features a syntactic formula of the type described by Milman Parry (Parry 1928:17-19 = Parry 1971:14-16). It consists of the accusative of the noun mênis (μῆνιν, usually translated as 'rage, wrath, anger') at the beginning of the line followed by a subjective genitive name (of the person whom the mênis inhabits) with epithets that concludes the line, as in Iliad 1.75, 5.444, 16.711, 19.75 (in the last attestation, the grammatical pattern is the same except that the genitive is not subjective or objective); another multiform of this syntactic pattern occurs in Iliad 19.35, where a dative of the object of the anger (Agamemnon) occurs whereas a subjective genitive is found in the other examples. Either epithets for the name or a verb governing the accusative fill up the space between line-initial μῆνιν and the name + epithet combinations at the end of the line; the current line is the only example we have in which an imperative verb and a term of address, θεά, occur in that space, but then again, this is the prooimion of the poem, not the narrative proper. One expects variation in traditional dictional patterns when the context varies, and in this case the variation pertains exactly to the conventional content of this context. One can also say that the traditional diction points at or highlights a conventional narrative usage by placing it in an extra-narrative context.","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":159,"length":5,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":309,"length":6,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":370,"length":5,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":577,"length":6,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":612,"length":6,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":1032,"length":9,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":1301,"length":9,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":1314,"length":10,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"796th","text":"Like every word in the epic song-generating system, mênin, the first word of the poem has expressive dimensions that were disclosed to its original audiences and performers through age-old, recurrent exposure to this poetry in performance. Those dimensions are invisible to us — unless we strive to rebuild them from the existing corpus of Homeric poetry. So this word means potentially more and potentially different things than the English words “rage” or “anger” with which it is usually translated. A contextual analysis that this commentary will track over the course of the poem supports one point that we anticipate here. mēnis is a keyword of a 'theme' or relatively formalized, larger unit of traditional content (for a working definition of the term ‘theme’ in the study of traditional poetry, see Lord 2000: ch. 4). That theme recurs within a more or less consistent set of episodes and diction elsewhere in the Homeric corpus, so its occurrence evokes a set of narratives that have a discernible pattern or patterns. We will signal the details of the patterns and their recurring diction as they reach the reader’s eyes. However, we signal now that a most illuminating instance of the mênis theme, which would make good reading before reading or re-reading the beginning of the Iliad, occurs at Iliad 15.1-142.","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":52,"length":5,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":630,"length":6,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":1198,"length":5,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":1241,"length":6,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":1291,"length":5,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":1308,"length":5,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"2qoan","text":"References","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"2jp5m","text":"Lord, A. 1960, 2nd ed. 2000. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge.","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":29,"length":19,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"84m3j","text":"Parry, A., ed. 1971. The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Oxford. update","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":21,"length":65,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}}],"entityMap":{}}