Das Geschichtsbild der Ilias: Eine Untersuchung aus phänomenologischer und narratologischer Perspektive (review)

This book's forbidding subtitle might give the impression that it is too preoccupied with theory to be of interest even to most classicists. In fact, Das Geschichtsbild der Ilias is at its heart a fresh and insightful approach to the most basic questions of interpretation that the Iliad poses as a literary work. This is not to say that Grethlein's book does not contain plenty of theory, but its two chapters of "theoretical considerations" (chs. 2 and 4) are for the most part ancillary and can easily be skipped or skimmed by less theoretically oriented readers. The one exception is the third section of chapter 3 (32–41), in which Grethlein elaborates a typology of four "historical perspectives." It is one of these perspectives, Schicksalskontingenz—a worldview in which human hopes and intentions are continually liable to be thwarted by chance contingencies—which Grethlein believes is the key to understanding the Iliad.

To begin with, Grethlein sees Schicksalskontingenz as defining the outlook of the Iliad's heroes. Although they continually seek to deny contingency through appeals to the stability of historical and mythic exempla, genealogies, and traditions, they are nevertheless forced to acknowledge the ultimate fragility of human life, and it is upon the recognition of this fragility that the heroic ethos is based. While this may not come as a revelation to students of Homer, Grethlein's readings of particular passages are often new and valuable. Particularly noteworthy is his elucidation (78–115) of the encounter between Glaukos and Diomedes in terms of the dynamic between Schicksalskontingenz and the heroes' attempts to achieve psychological security through alternative, but ultimately less sustainable, perspectives.

Grethlein goes on to argue that the poet himself shares his characters' worldview and that this is reflected in the Homeric narrative in a variety of ways. Among these are the poem's frequent descriptions of sudden deaths and unintended consequences (e.g., attacks that kill someone other than the intended victim) and the poet's use of prolepsis, ironic correspondences, and the gods' superior knowledge to emphasize the slippage between human expectations and actual outcomes. Grethlein's most striking argument, however, is his contention that the Iliad is designed to impose the experience of contingency on its audience by continually arousing and reinforcing in them a feeling that the narrative could, and perhaps should, have turned out differently. It is in this light that Grethlein understands such puzzling aspects of the Iliad's architecture as the apparently inessential duel between Paris and Menelaus in book 3 (which leaves readers feeling that a more bloodless resolution of the Trojan War really was possible) or the frequent foreshadowings of the death of Achilles and the fall of Troy, which produce in readers a sense of "openness" or incompleteness, since the poem ends without the anticipated events having occurred. Ultimately, Grethlein achieves impressive success in explaining many idiosyncratic features of the Iliad's narrative not as artifacts of composition, but as deliberate artistry intended to manipulate the audience's expectations and confront them with a sense of the uncertainty of human outcomes.

The weakest part of Grethlein's book (perhaps weak only by comparison) is his attempt to consummate his thesis by regarding the whole of Achilles' psychological development as an extended effort to grapple with the problem of historical contingency. This leads him into arguments which tend to be problematic exactly to the extent that they are not conventional. In chapter 3, for example, Grethlein contends that the death of Patroklos is important in developing Achilles' awareness of human vulnerability; it is in terms of this awareness, however, that Grethlein will go on to explain Achilles' actions earlier in the poem. Likewise, Grethlein's contention in chapter 6 that Achilles attains a readerly or godlike perspective on life relies on a discussion of Aristotle's idea of pity whose applicability to the Iliad is somewhat...