The Madness of Epic: Reading Insanity From Homer to Statius

Oxford/ New York: Clarendon Press/ Oxford University Press, 1998. Hardcover. VG/VG (Ex-library with stamps and labels on spine, inside front and rear covers, ffep and block.). Black cloth boards with gilt spine lettering; black dj, bw illustration, mylar cover; xiii, 346 pp. "Madness plays a vital role in many ancient epics: not only do characters go mad, but madness also often occupies a central thematic position in the texts. In this book, Debra Hershkowitz examines from a variety of theoretical angles the representation and poetic function of madness in Greek and Latin epic from Homer through the Flavians, including individual chapters devoted to the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Bellum Civile, and Statius' Thebaid. The study also addresses the difficulty of defining madness, and discusses how each epic explores this problem in a different way, finding its own unique way of conceptualizing madness."--Jacket. Contents: Introduction : fragments d'un discours furieux -- Vergil's Aeneid: the Romans and the irrational -- Homeric epic: the Greeks and the rational? -- Ovid's Metamorphoses: shifting boundaries of the divided self -- Lucan's Bellum ciuile: epic in extremis -- Statius' Thebaid: furor without limits.