| Title | : | Kleos in a Minor Key: The Homeric Education of a Little Prince (Hellenic Studies Series) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0674055926 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780674055926 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 186 |
| Publication | : | First published March 1, 2011 |
As scholars have remarked, the word kleos in the Iliad and the Odyssey alike refers to something more substantive and complex than “fame” or “glory.” Kleos distinctly supposes an oral narrative―principally an “oral history,” a “life story” or ultimately an “oral tradition.” When broken down into its twin constituents, “words” and “actions” or “deeds,” a hero’s kleos serves to define him as a fully gendered social being.
This book is a meditation on this concept as expressed and experienced in the adult society Telemachos find himself in. Kleos is the yardstick by which his psychological change was appreciated by Homer’s audiences. As this book shows through philological and interdisciplinary analysis, Prince Telemachos grows up in the course of the Telemachy and arguably even beyond (in book 24): his education, which is conceived largely as an apprenticeship on land and sea, admits him gradually if unevenly to a full-fledged adult kleos ―a kleos that nonetheless necessarily remains minor in comparison to that of his father and other elders.
This book is a meditation on this concept as expressed and experienced in the adult society Telemachos find himself in. Kleos is the yardstick by which his psychological change was appreciated by Homer’s audiences. As this book shows through philological and interdisciplinary analysis, Prince Telemachos grows up in the course of the Telemachy and arguably even beyond (in book 24): his education, which is conceived largely as an apprenticeship on land and sea, admits him gradually if unevenly to a full-fledged adult kleos ―a kleos that nonetheless necessarily remains minor in comparison to that of his father and other elders.
Kleos in a Minor Key: The Homeric Education of a Little Prince (Hellenic Studies Series) Reviews
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This is a pretty valuable contribution to the ever-growing corpus of scholarship on Telemachus. Petropoulos' work on Telemachus' kleos is especially well done, and I suspect that this element will provide the book with some staying power in the field for years to come. The book has major shortcomings, in my opinion, in Petropoulos' attempt to apply complex anthropological and psychological models to vast lengths of the poem without being willing to devote the space necessary for proper analysis. A glaring example is Petropoulos' claim that there is an Oedipal conflict between Telemachus and Odysseus (96). No evidence is given in support, and the reader is left to wonder just what exactly Petropoulos means.
