Critique de Choice
Rabel (Univ. of Kentucky) argues that, in chapters 3 and 24 of the Poetics, Aristotle suggests a way of looking at The Iliad, a way not previously noticed by modern scholars in their discussion of narrative and point of view in the epic. Eric Auerbach writes in Mimesis (Eng. trans., 1953), for instance, that Homeric narrative "makes no use of perspective"; in The Dialogic Imagination (CH, Jul'81), M.M. Bakhtin states that epic contains one "unitary and singular belief system." (Rabel cites, among others, M. Parry, A. Parry, and M. Bowra as arguing in favor of presenting "one unitary Aristotle.") On the other hand, Aristotle discusses Homer a number of times in the Poetics, most specifically in chapters 3 and 24. In a book-by-book discussion of Homer's Iliad--and taking Aristotle's Poetics for his source--Rabel argues compellingly that in The Iliad Homer offers his reader a multiple perspective, that both the narrator and the poet "manipulate point of view in order to discover and define the meaning" of The Iliad. To do this, Homer produces an analysis of the tragic limitations "of life in accordance with the heroic ethic." In addition, he produces a prevailing ironic vision, "which even calls into question the narrator's point of view on the meaning of the story," providing an example of the various individual perspectives. Recommended for graduate and research libraries only. A. F. Erlebach Michigan Technological University