Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:11:47.632Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Achilles, Celebrity Recluse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Extract

Refusing to fight the trojans because he will not countenance agamemnon's colonizing self-interest, achilles re-treated to his tent. All because Agamemnon did not want to give up a woman (Chryseis) and, when he is forced to do so, claims a woman who was part of Achilles's war bounty (Briseis). Suffering humiliation after injustice is not a fate that proud Achilles will endure, and he responds to this outrage with a signal act: retreat. In this moment, Homer's “brilliant Achilles,” famed military man and the “greatest hero of the Greeks,” becomes the first celebrity recluse in history (1.10). Achilles is the first figure to give the recluse a (heroic) place in the popular imaginary. We even have a phrase for Achilles's act, bequeathed to us as an accusation: sulking in one's tent. This popular expression is used to indict, often harshly, those who quit because they believe they have been unfairly treated. In leveling this charge, we implicitly side with Agamemnon, who accuses Achilles of the most dastardly military act: “Desert, by all means, if the spirit drives you home!” (1.204). As an expression, sulking in one's tent is ripe for mockery, redolent with puerile imagery, conjuring up scenarios in which spoiled children, obstreperous adolescents, or overindulged celebrities behave badly because they cannot get their way.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind. New York: Houghton, 1981. Print.Google Scholar
Braudy, Leo. “The Longing of Alexander.” The Celebrity Culture Reader. Ed. Marshall, David P. New York: Routledge, 2006. 3554. Print.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F.Epic Poetry.” Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Trans. T. M. Knox. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974. 1040–110. Print.Google Scholar
Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Viking, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Lemert, Charles C. Muhammad Ali: Trickster in the Culture of Irony. Cambridge: Polity, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Malouf, David. Ransom. New York: Pantheon, 2009. Print.Google Scholar
Troy. Screenplay by David Benioff. Dir. Wolfgang Peterson. Perf. Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, and Orlando Bloom. Warner Brothers, 2004. Film.Google Scholar