Critical guide Iliad

Here is a valuable work: the first full commentary on the Iliad in one very handy volume, with I think all the useful bibliography, at least for the works available in English. It should involve the entire academic public, students and teachers, for a somewhat in-depth approach to the Homeric epic. On condition that non-English speaking teachers supplement the bibliographical reference arsenal with data from their linguistic field, it seems to me to provide the necessary information in a very accessible form (Paperback volume of reasonable weight, it also exists in bound form). After the introduction by the editor, the well-known specialist of homeric comparisons Jonathan Ready, each song of the Iliad is entrusted to a different author, all specialists of Homer in one title or another, so that no chapter seemed irrelevant. The list of contributors is at the end of the volume. A song and an author per chapter, this ensures a certain diversity. But the structure of each chapter is identical for each song: summary; study of the topics covered; poetics; list of themes related to other passages in the Iliad; essential bibliographical references. This aspect is obviously crucial for the rational use of the public, both teachers and students. I will of course comment on each chapter more closely, but first I would like to say that the the only point of criticism I would have to make in this general plan is the place given to the summaries-half a page to three printed pages-compared to articles of about ten pages on average, seems excessive, given that summaries are found almost everywhere in the school editions of the Iliad, and that abstracts can encourage students to dispense with a full reading, in which only, in my opinion, is what Barthes called the "pleasure of the text". Commentary on song 1, by Mary Bachvarova: the conflict of the Iliad is a conflict of words, eris, between two leaders of the same camp causing the anger of Achilles, mēnis; the poetics of this song organized around the fundamental orality of the poem, of the minimal compositional unit that is the formula to the typical scene, presenting in an allusive form a rich legendary background (fight of the Lapiths against the Centaurs, sacrifice of the daughter of Agamemnon, rescue by Thetes of Zeus prisoner of the other gods) ; second time devoted to comparative parallels that include the Iliad in an Indo-European context. Rachel Friedmann, chant 2: themes of the dream, of the dissension in the Achean army and the consequent threat, presentation of Ulysses as a good king in contrast to the ineptitude of Agamemnon and character of Thersite with a name that speaks; for the poetic, good analysis of the comparisons that punctuate the stages of the movement of the army, and mark the presence of the poet. The Catalogue of ships is poetic, the call to the Muse who introduced it and the story of the aedium Thamyris, punished for his claim to compete with the Muses, are proof.