Polytropos Ajax

Roots, Evolution, and Reception of a Multifaceted Hero

Silvia Speriani, Stephen Harrison

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9783111450469
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Literature

Meanings are realized at the point of reception and this volume intends to offer an in-depth discussion of some of the meanings associated with and raised by the figure of Telamonian Ajax at various, specifically contextualized, and yet somehow connectable 'points of reception'.

Part 1 looks at how, and from where, and with what effects, the epic and tragic figure of Ajax is constructed and re-defined in archaic and classical Greece. Part 2 moves on to Roman Ajax(es), evaluating how he is used in and by Latin literature as a tool for window-references and innovation, and for reflecting on national identity and cultural categories. Part 3 discusses various ways in which the myth of Ajax, especially in its Sophoclean version, has been translated into theatrical, psychological, and philosophical discussions.

This is not an attempt to look for Ajax's true nature (an ill-posed question in itself). Nor is it a claim to evaluate Ajax's features as if they could be placed on a straight evolutionary line (they never can be). On the contrary, the volume provides a multiform and interconnected ensemble of relevant patterns, always particularly situated, and constantly changing.

Table of contents

• Editors’ Preface
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• Part I: Constructing Ajax
• A Primitive and yet Civilized Hero: Further Observations on Ajax in the Iliad
• Pre-Homeric Ajax
• Sophocles’ Ajax between Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus
• Sophocles’ Ajax: Solitude and Change
• A Hero through his Objects: The Construction of Ajax’s Image on Attic Red-figure Vases
• Part II: Romanising Ajax
• Ajax and the Reception of the ‘Alius Achilles’ Theme in the Augustan Epic Tradition
• Ajax vs Hector and the Roman Single Combat
• Hero, Antagonist, and Cousin: Some Remarks on Telamonian Ajax in the Ilias Latina
• Siblings by Blood: Ajax and Teucer from the Iliad to the Ilias Latina
• Part III: Performing Ajax
• On Staging or not Staging Sophocles’ Ajax
• Between Individual Trauma and Collective Mourning: The Reception of Sophocles’ Ajax on French Stages in the 1990s
• Three Thousand Years of the Thousand-Yard Stare: The Experience of War, from the Ancient Greeks to Now
• What Made Ajax Kill Himself? An Existential Reading of Sophocles’ Ajax
• List of Contributors
• General Index