Helen of Troy (eBook)

Laurie Maguire is Professor of English at Oxford University and has authored or edited six previous books, including Studying Shakespeare and the popular Where There's a Will There's a Way. She has lectured widely at literary festivals in the U.S. and U.K.

List of Illustrations

Preface

Source Acknowledgments

Conventions

Introduction: Ab ovo

Beginnings

Stories and Contexts

1. Narrating Myth

Whose Story?

Absence

Fragments and Narrative

Closure

The Textual Shudder

Myth and Repetition

Origins

Myth and Meaning

Causes

(En)Closure

2. Beauty

Excess and Deficiency

Narrating the Absolute

Staging the Absolute

Detailing Helen

The Beauty Effect

Helen's Breasts

Androgyny

Helen's Scar

Relativizng the Absolute

Helen and Old Age

Beauty: Subjectivity and Objectivity

Beauty and Nostalgia

3. Abducting Helen

Missing Moments

Homer, the Iliad

Herodotus, the Histories

Chaucer and Narrative Gaps

Helen and Cressida

The Law's Resolution of Women's Rights
(1632)

Statute Change in 1597

The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

Helen (of Troy)

Rape as Revenge

4. Blame

Accounts

Casting Blame: Helen, Paris, and the Gods

Sidestepping Blame: Sympathy in the Iliad

Competing Narratives: the Odyssey

"Twisting Eulogy/And Censure Both Together"

Voicing Helen: Euripides

Helen Among the Sophists

Agency (1): Joseph of Exeter

Agency (2): Middle English Troy Books

George Peele, The Tale of Troy (1589)

Deifying Helen: John Ogle, The Lamentation of Troy
(1594)

Mimetic Desire, the Scapegoat, and Blasphemy

Naming and Shaming

5. Helen and the Faust Tradition

Form and Appearance in the English Faust Book

Helen in the English Faust Book

Dr Faustus and Language

Dr Faustus and Boundaries

Goethe (1749-1832)

Goethe and Representation

Goethe and the Beauty of Language

The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships

Jo Clifford (1950- )

Clifford's Helen and Gender Politics

6. Parodying Helen

Comedy

The Novel

Caribbean Helen: Derek Walcott, Omeros (1990)

Notes

References

Index

"Overall, Maguire's book is a remarkably broad literary study of
the complex and recurring figure of Helen of Troy. Her work is both
comprehensive and detailed, covering a huge body of material both
ancient and modern." (International Journal of the Classical
Tradition, 2011)



"In conclusion, this an important work, especially praiseworthy
for its wide-ranging critical perspectives and admirable depth of
information, and above all for its all-round literary explorations.
It is also a very enjoyable read." (Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 25
March 2011)

"It is an important work in the broad area of Classical
Reception and it is aimed at both specialists and the general
reader; and it is quite remarkable for the vast variety of
information, sources and genres surveyed and for the wealth of
secondary literature and critical approaches deployed." (Bmcreview,
7 March 2011)

"Maguire's book is an unusually effective study of something
often invoked in an airy sort of way but difficult to represent
concretely and cogently: literature and related arts as an ongoing
and continuously motivated enterprise, sometimes almost collective
in its workings across great stretches of time." (Translation
& Literature, 2010)"M.'s survey is impressively broad in
scope ... .An impressive achievement." (The Classical
Journal, February 2010)

"Erudite and entertaining ... .We are certainly better equipped
to understand the phenomenon of such a mysterious narrative lacuna
by the end of Maguire's inspirational book." (The Times Literary
Supplement, November 2009)

"Combining wit, learning, and insight, Maguire offers
delightful reading both for the specialist and for the serious
general reader." (Library Journal, May 2009)