Fighting Words and Feuding Words

This work provides an analysis of the semantics of anger in the poetry of Homer.

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Fighting Words and Feuding Words engages the powerful tools of Homeric poetic analysis and the anthropological study of emotion in an analysis of two anger terms highlighted in the Iliad by the Achaean prophet Calchas. Walsh argues that kotos and kholos locate two focal points for the study of aggression in Homeric poetry, the first presenting Homer's terms for feud and the second providing the native terms that designates the martial violence highlighted by the Homeric tradition.