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Book 3 and reciprocal love
Oct. 23rd, 2024 03:51 pmThis is a little (probably very) self-indulgent, and doesn't have anything at all to do as such with what's shown in the Iliad, and certainly not with what the Iliad's texts intends. But I've been reading Meriel Jones' Playing the Man: Performing Masculinities in the Greek Novel and came across something that made me think of the way things play out in Book 3 regarding the Menelaos - Helen - Paris situation there.
Obviously, back during Archaic Greece and earlier, the idea of reciprocal love in this way isn't a thing as such - while the athletic and martial imagery is often between/against the couple/the lover and their love-object, this idea of something reciprocal and at least technically not hierarchical is a later development.
But Book 3 plays out a male rivalry between two (male) opponents over their mute (though Helen does speak) prize, and then does not decisively resolve this conflict through the male rivalry at this point. Yes, tradition demands that things can't be resolved, but the fun for me here is more what that looks like, using this later idea of exclusively male rivalry/contest as mistaken in how love works.
Aphrodite - the very goddess of love and desire, who in the same novel those thesis excerpts are discussing has a part in engineering an ending to the novel and the couple - removes Paris from the battlefield, the very male-contest-oriented location, to his own bedroom. It's how Book 3 ends with a re-establishing of a couple not through (male) martial or athletic competition, but a private and, the way Helen's conflicted desires underpin all her reactions, at least on some level reciprocal confirmation of love/desire.
Obviously, back during Archaic Greece and earlier, the idea of reciprocal love in this way isn't a thing as such - while the athletic and martial imagery is often between/against the couple/the lover and their love-object, this idea of something reciprocal and at least technically not hierarchical is a later development.
But Book 3 plays out a male rivalry between two (male) opponents over their mute (though Helen does speak) prize, and then does not decisively resolve this conflict through the male rivalry at this point. Yes, tradition demands that things can't be resolved, but the fun for me here is more what that looks like, using this later idea of exclusively male rivalry/contest as mistaken in how love works.
Aphrodite - the very goddess of love and desire, who in the same novel those thesis excerpts are discussing has a part in engineering an ending to the novel and the couple - removes Paris from the battlefield, the very male-contest-oriented location, to his own bedroom. It's how Book 3 ends with a re-establishing of a couple not through (male) martial or athletic competition, but a private and, the way Helen's conflicted desires underpin all her reactions, at least on some level reciprocal confirmation of love/desire.
