The Concept of Plot and the Plot of the "Iliad"

Abstract

THE MEANING OF A WORK OF ART is not something which can be extracted from a container, like a message from a bottle; every element is potentially meaningful, potentially expressive of author's mind and intention. And one potentially expressive element of a story is shape of In this essay I examine plot of Iliad, using some concepts derived from recent theories of narrative. The complex nesting structure of successive conflicts in this narrative expresses, I believe, a world of radical instability, a world in which no resolution leads finally to peace. This pattern begins with first incident in story and continues to very end. Chryses' supplication of Agamemnon at beginning of Iliad (1.17-21) takes form of speech, but it is also an action: a speech act, to use terminology of school initiated by J. L. Austin (1975 [1962]) and continued byJohn Searle (1979; 1985) among others.1 It is also an action in a sense specific to narrative-without it, story of Iliad could hardly happen. Cedric Whitman (1965: 131) quite rightly calls Agamemnon's insult to Chryses the germ of plot. If Chryses had not come as a suppliant to Agamemnon, and if Agamemnon had not scornfully rejected supplication, then Apollo would not have sent plague, Agamemnon would not have argued with Achilles, and Achilles would not have withdrawn from battle. Chryses' speech is part of sequence of cause and effect which makes up specific plot of Iliad, and thus it is an action within Not every speech (or speech act) is an action in this sense.2

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