Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad - Paperback

by Irene De Jong (Author)

Irene de Jong's Narrators and Focalizers was acclaimed as one of the pioneering texts to introduce narratology (the theory that deals with the general principles underlying narrative texts) to classical scholarship. The book explains key concepts such as 'narrator', 'narratee', 'focalization', 'analepsis' and 'prolepsis', highlighting their relevance by using them for the analysis and interpretation of Homer's Iliad. What is the role of the narrator, how does the subjectivity of the characters find expression, and how do the parts of the story told by the narrator relate to the many speeches for which Homer is famous?

This new edition of this important work includes a substantial new Introduction by the author, offering an overview of the trends in Homeric narratological scholarship over the last decade, along with a much more user-friendly Index of Passages.

Author Biography

Irene de Jong is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature in the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She specializes in the application of narratology to ancient texts. Her books include Narrative in Drama: the art of the Euripidean messenger speech (1991) and A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (2001).