Testing Your Notetaking Skills – Answers
1. What does Thersites’s protest signal about the forms of both charismatic and
traditional authority?
Thersites is an artifactualization of a social problem, a symbol of the ways that
both charismatic and traditional authority fail as social values.
!  Charismatic authority cannot be shared or transmitted. Achilles’s power
is exemplary, but cannot serve as an example because it cannot be
imitated. On the other hand, tradition may anoint leaders, but it does not
itself validate them. As Izenberg put it, having been passed the scepter
the right way doesn’t necessarily make you the right man to wield it.
2. How does Izenberg understand the passages in Book 6 (lines 509-512 and
521-533) in which we are given a glimpse into Hector’s domestic life?
Hector’s interaction with Andromache and Astyanax demonstrates that unlike
Achilles, Hector is embedded in social life; in a way, Hector’s family comes to
stand for the entire spectrum of human attachments and emotional bonds that
are not permitted by the heroic code. This implies that in Homeric culture, one
cannot belong to the social order and also protect it.
Testing Your Notetaking Skills – Answers
3. Izenberg sets up three pairs of foils (characters that serve to highlight one or
more attributes of another character by providing a contrast). What are these
three pairs and what contrasts in the design of the poem do they stage? [3
sentences]
a. Achilles is charismatic authority; Agamemnon is traditional authority.
b. Achilles is the best of the Acheans; Thersites is the worst.
c. Achilles is the fullest realization of the heroic code, Hector is the bonds
of the social world (each desires what the other represents).
d. Patroclus is a human warrior, Achilles’s strength is granted by his
divinity.
e. Agamemnon’s weaknesses as a leader are contrasted with Odysseus’s
relation to bravery and justice.
4. In Homeric culture, what is the ergon of the technê of poetry?
The goal of poetry in Homeric culture is the preservation of kleos and the
dissemination of knowledge about the world.
! Today, Izenberg added another function: the foregrounding and
interrogation of the principles by which the poem (or anything) is made.
Testing Your Notetaking Skills – Answers
5. What defines an artifact as opposed to a mere object?
The artifact is (1) a made thing with (2) a specific form or shape, (3) a
purpose of function, and, perhaps most importantly, (4) a meaning.
Bonus question: Why is war an artifactualization of death?
War transforms a natural process (death) into a man-made one.
6. What are two functions of ekphrastic depiction in the Homeric epic?
The ekphrastic depiction of Achilles’s shield not only discloses the
representational structure of the poem, but the whole world.
Today, Izenberg expanded this reading of the ekphrastic passage of the
poem…
Reconstructing Izenberg’s Reading of the Shield of Achilles
How does Professor Izenberg read Homer’s relationship to Hephaestus?
And that famous crippled Smith replied, “Courage!
Anguish for all that armor—sweep it from your mind.
If only I could hide him away from pain and death,
that day his grim destiny comes to take Achilles,
as surely as glorious armor shall be his, armor
that any man in the world of men will marvel at
through all the years to come—whoever sees its splendor.”
….
And first Hephaestus makes a great and massive shield,
blazoning well-wrought emblems across its surface,
raising a rim around it, glittering, triple-ply
With a silver shield-strap run from edge to edge
And five layers of metal to build the shield itself,
And across its vast expanse with all his craft and cunning
The god creates a world of gorgeous immortal work. (18.558-564)
How does Izenberg understand the dynamic between the city of war and the
city of peace?
And he forged on the shield two noble cities filled
with mortal men. With weddings and feasts in one
and under glowing torches they brought forth the brides
from the women’s chambers marching through the streets
….
And the people massed streaming into the marketplace
where a quarrel had broken out and two men struggled
over the blood price for a kinsman just murdered.
….
Two bars of gold shone on the ground before them
a prize for the judge who’d speak the straightest verdict.
(18.571-583)
But circling the other city camped a divided army
gleaming in battle gear, and two plans split their ranks:
to plunder the city or share the riches with its people,
hoards the handsome citadel stored within its depths.
But the people were not surrendering, not at all. (18.593-597)
What does the following passage reveal about ekphrasis as the “meeting place
of two arts”?
And the golden drovers kept the herd in line,
four in all, with nine dogs at their heels,
their paws flickering quickly—a savage roar!—
a crashing attack—and a pair of ramping lions
had seized a bull from the cattle’s front ranks—
he bellowed out as they dragged him off in agony. (18.674-679)
Writing Exercise:
Claim/Evidence/Warrants Paragraph About Homeric Simile
Last week, I asked you to begin taking note of all the similes that make
comparisons to forces of nature. Select one simile that you particularly
enjoy or that you think is particularly important to the poem as a whole.
Using that passage as the basis of your evidential support, create a
arguable claim, or topic sentence, that does specific conceptual work to
advance or disprove Weil’s thesis. In effect, you are putting your passage
into conversation with her claim. Compose a paragraph in support of your
own specific, complex claim and using the textual evidence that you gather
by formally explicating your passage. Make sure that you include a
warrant that shows how your evidence supports your claim. In this case, it
should show how the literary device (the epic simile) functions or
contributes to a new way of understanding the text and Weil’s thesis.
Your paragraph should give a sense of building a persuasive argument
through interpretation, not by simply describing or narrating what happens
in your selected passage.
Peer Review:
Claim/Evidence/Warrants Paragraph About Homeric Simile
On page 43 of the HCC Writer’s Handbook, Susan Morse gives a checklist
for evaluating the strength of an argument. Read your classmate’s
paragraph carefully, then discuss the nine questions posed in that list.
How well does the paragraph address those requirements? Is there a
particular part of the paragraph (claim, evidence, warrants) that seems
especially strong? Weak?
This format is essential to paragraph construction for the first essay of the
quarter, so it is important to hone these skills now.