Reaching

This chapter examines Priam’s gesture of reaching Achilles’ hands to his mouth when he comes to ransom the body of his son. The gesture has been noted for its emotional effect, but here it is framed within the context of other gestures at work in the Iliad’s final book. The chapter draws on Agamben’s definition of gesture as a “bearing” of the body in order to highlight the essential ambiguity of whose hands reach toward whom in the famous scene of supplication. Priam’s desire to lift the body of Hector and Achilles’ dragging of the corpse are both physical forms of expression for bearing up under the pressure of grief. But Achilles’ action speaks also to the drag of gesture itself: its slow undertow, even its clumsiness, as manifested in the various iterations of holding and reaching that Priam and Achilles together attempt to perform.

Conclusion

This conclusion briefly restates the argument of the book and considers the broader implications of studying Homeric formularity and agency through embodied action. It places in juxtaposition the kinetic reflexes of the hero and the aesthetic reflexes of the poet, in an attempt to open up new ways of reading literature through and within the body. The result is a book that thinks in new terms about epic repetition and the actions of Homeric characters within the constraints of oral poetry. I end the conclusion by suggesting that gesture’s quiet capacity to act on its own accord and to exhibit its own form of autonomy leads to novel possibilities for our consideration of Homeric character and agency.

Falling

Falling is not only a highly repetitive action in the Iliad but also the primary means for indicating death on the battlefield. It is thus a quintessentially human gesture, which draws the body not only toward death but also into a specifically mortal sense of time. In light of the significance of falling for mortals, this chapter examines the problematic case of two gods who fall in the Iliad. It argues that when Hephaestus tumbles to earth from Olympus and when Ares is knocked flat on the battlefield, both gods also “fall into” human time. This action complicates their status as immortals and draws into question the different temporal registers at work in the poem.

Leaping

This chapter considers the last gesture that Odysseus performs in the Odyssey: a single leap ten lines before the poem’s end. It understands that leap within the context of formulaic epic action, whose gestures function as a series of habituated impulses that almost automatically drive the actions of their characters forward. In the case of Odysseus, however, his final leap expresses an instance of “rebellious repetition,” in which the kinaesthetic reflex of his body runs counter to the demands of the narrative. The chapter traces Odysseus’ leap through two passages in the Iliad (Achilles’ partial drawing of his sword in Book 1 and Hector’s last leap in Book 22) and one in the Aeneid (the death of Turnus). It argues that each of these gestures shows the epic body caught in a moment of conflict between its own epic impulses and the demands of narrative form.

Introduction

The Introduction provides a summary of the book’s argument and chapters as well as an overview of various theories of gesture and embodiment. It begins by establishing a relationship between the repeated practices and techniques of the bard in composing epic poetry and the habits (and habitus) of the human body, showing how Homer’s bodies are formulaic much as Homer’s verse is. It draws on the work of Marey, Muybridge, and Warburg to capture gesture’s phrases and qualities, and provides a summary of studies on embodied movement practice and social conditioning (James, Mauss, Bourdieu, Butler, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty). It argues that the notion of gestural freedom provides an interpretive key to reading the movement choices of characters within the poems. The Introduction ends with a brief discussion of the question of the Homeric body in current scholarship, showing how the book intends to add to and reframe that debate.

Running

This chapter examines the difference between catching up and overtaking as it applies to the Iliad and Odyssey. It begins by exploring how the Iliad foregrounds the problems and strategies involved with catching up with one’s opponent and getting ahead. It then goes on to show how, by contrast, the Odyssey presents a world where overtaking and alternating between the positions of first and last are of central concern to Odysseus in the course of his journey home. This focus on the thematics of running not only reveals a different kinetic sensibility between the two poems but also a difference between time as it is experienced through the body and time as it unfolds in the plot. The chapter argues that the distinctive running styles of Achilles and Odysseus illustrate important conceptual differences between the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Standing

This chapter looks at two separate and enduring acts of standing in the Iliad and Odyssey. The first is the “standing apart” of Achilles and Agamemnon at the beginning of the Iliad. This opening act sets in motion a series of separations in the poem that come to signify the loneliness of the Homeric warrior. The second is Penelope’s signature pose of “standing beside the stathmos,” repeated four times in the Odyssey and symbolizing her reluctance to move forward through time. These two different forms of standing (one placed in relation to a series of prepositional prefixes to articulate a poetics of adjacency for the Iliad, and the other repeating without variation for the same character in the same location in the Odyssey) introduce a gendered reading of the Homeric body and its relation to both repetition and agency.