Poetics of Consent

David F. Elmer is an associate professor of the classics at Harvard University.

• AcknowledgmentsA Note on Texts, Translations, and TransliterationsAbbreviationsIntroduction: From Politics to PoeticsPart I: Frameworks and Paradigms1. The Grammar of Reception2. Consensus and Kosmos: Speech and the Social World in an Indo- European Perspective3. Achilles and the Crisis of the Exception4. Social Order and Poetic Order: Agamemnon, Thersites, and the Cata logue of ShipsPart II: The Iliad's Political Communities5. In Search of Epainos: Collective Decision Making among the Achaeans6. A Consensus of Fools: The Trojans' Exceptional Epainos7. The View from Olympus: Divine Politics and MetapoeticsPart III: Resolutions8. The Return to Normalcy and the Iliad's "Boundless People"9. The Politics of Reception: Collective Response and Iliadic Audiences within and beyond the TextAfterword: Epainos and the OdysseyNotesBibliographyNotes

An excellent book that puts the boundaries socio-historic interpretation and textual semantics to a serious test. It is of great relevance to both historians and philologists... Overall, this is a great and thought-provoking book with a fascinating argument. -- Werner Tietz Bryn Mawr Classical Review The thesis that the Iliad's conflict-ridden communities in fact reinforce communitarian values is persuasive, the identification of those communities with the interpretive communities that propagated Homeric poetry is intriguing, and both of these ideas are sure to play a significant role in shaping the interpretative of epic poetry in the future. -- James Marks Phoenix If The Poetics of Consent were to find a broad readership, it could, as I believe it should, transform the face of Homeric scholarship. -- Roger Travis New England Classical Journal The book is remarkably well written and engaging, always seeking clear explanations of complex concepts. The book also synthesizes and extends the current state of scholarship on the Iliad, addressing, as well as any recent book, the different (often divergent) approaches to the politics and poetics of the epic. -- Dean Hammer Classical Journal The book is exemplary in approaching large poetic and cultural issues through details of language and patterns of formulaic usage. -- William G. Thalman American Journal of Philology ... The Poetics of consent is an in-depth study of one word, epainos ('approval'), and its occurrence throughout the Iliad. But, in Elmer's expert hands, It becomes the means like an Ariadne thread, of tracing a way through the Iliad's bigger picture, this book will be a trustworthy companion for future generations if Homeric scholars. Hermathena