Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer: A Study of Words and Myths

Cover,1
Preface,5
Contents,7
Texts Abbreviations and Commentanries,10
Part I: Prologue,13
 I. Homeric Words and Homeric Ideas,13
  Reading Homer in isolation,14
  Religion and world-picture,19
  Words and ideas,23
  Poetic language and poetic ideas,32
  The integrated study of Homer,36
  Semantic reconstruction,41
 2. The Categories of Body and Soul,47
  Asking the right questions,47
  Dualism of body and soul is insidious,49
  Dualistic words and categories constrain scholarship,52
  The quest ahead,57
Part II: The Language of Thought and Life,63
 3. The Breath of Life and the Meaning of psyche,63
  The shape of Homeric man,63
  Does the living man have a psyche,65
 4. Mental Life and the Body,71
  Thymos and its family,71
  The idea of psychological identity,71
  The mental apparatus has many names but is undivided,73
  Mental agents and functions are one,76
  The s1iding scale of agency and function in Iliad I-VI,79
  Mental life is in the breast,83
  Mental life ebbs nnd flows as breath and fluids,89
  New emotions flow into the mental apparatus,100
  The flow of bile chólos,102
  The stuff of thought alternately softens coagulates,107
  In folly the stuff of thought is dispersed,111
  Homeric psychology is a seamless garment,116
  The defining factor can be in movement not substance,119
  The body and the se1f are one,125
  Body and not-body,125
  As nóos thought goes beyond the apparatus in the breast,129
Part III: Death and the Afterlife,139
 5. The Dying Gasp and the Journey to Hades,139
  Loss of thymos is loss of breath and life,140
  Loss of psyche is likewise Joss of breath,143
  Loss of psyche can be its annihilntion,147
  Thymos can be lost temporarily by swooning,149
  Psyche is gasped out thymos is breathed back in,150
  Psyche; psychrós; psychô refer to coldness breath and blowing,154
  Psyche has two senses in two narrative contexts,157
  The image of the flying psyche yokes the two together,158
  The image of flight emerges from that of lost breath,161
 6. The Corpse and the Afterlife,167
  The corpse has lost vitality but still holds identity,167
  To die is to waste away enfeebled,170
  When is the corpse distinguished from the dead man?,171
  Mutilation of the corpse is mutilntion or the man,175
  Hades is beyond the darkness of death,176
  Allusion to the descent in rhetorical llnd synoptic style,178
  Mutilation is alluded to in the Bame way os Hades,180
  The descent of psyche emerges from the descent of kefale,182
  Hades is below the earth men stand on,188
  The purpose of the funeral is social,190
  Nékys / nekrós both corpse nnd dweller in the Hades,200
  The dweller in Hades is corpse or shade,201
  The shade is defined as remanant or as counterfeit,204
  The shade's movement names it as psyche,208
  The identity of the shade is indeterminate,210
  The shade is an image of the undivided bodily man,215
  These articulations are irreconcilable - a problem,217
  Patterns of the relation between shade and corpse,221
  a. The authenticity of the Second Nekuia,235
Part IV: The Shaping of Myth,239
 7. The Personalities of Death,239
  How does the visible world relate to the mythical?,239
  The divinities of death,239
  Sleep has a fluid personality,243
  The descent of darkness is the experience of death,247
  Death approaches and seizes the victim,249
  The planning of fate leads to death's fulfilment,257
  The same names can be used without mythical import,259
  Death comes from the arrows of Artemis and Apollo,263
  Mythical forms in stories of the gods and in works of art,265
  'Everything is full of gods',267
 8. Conclusion: The Dynamics of Mythical Image-making,270
  The suppleness of myth,270
  The divine society,272
  Ares and war,275
 Helios and Scomander,278
  The supple identity of psyche,282
  The double plane of causation,283
  The double plane of death,288
Epilogue: Flesh and Spirit in Language and Lore after Homer,291
References,326
Index of Words,345
Index of Passages,351
General Index,373