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Reviews
| Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture, by Thomas Van Nortwick. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008. 192 pages. $44.95, cloth.
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| Thomas Van Nortwick makes an important contribution to the recent scholarly literature on ancient Greek masculinity, as exemplified by his earlier publication, Oedipus: The Meaning of Masculine Life (1998), as well as works such as R. Rosen and I. Sluiter, eds., Andreia (2003) and J. Roisman, The Rhetoric of Manhood (2005). Van Nortwick's style is engaging and the book is reader-friendly. It provides useful background for the ancient works discussed, translations of key passages, and summaries at the end of each chapter. Teachers who wish to introduce the subject to college students or upper classes in high school will find the book useful and thought-provoking. |
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Van Nortwick's aim is to explore "ancient Greek models for masculinity... in Greek literature in the period from 750–400 B.C.E." (Preface). He is chiefly interested in how the Greeks' assumptions about manhood shaped their ideas of the meaning of life. For that purpose, he focuses on tales of heroes, especially in the Homeric epics and Athenian tragedy, and defines their masculinity as relative to boundaries. The most important of these boundaries was mortality, thus, stories often contained heroes seeking immortality through the masculine pursuit of honor and glory. Other boundaries, which heroes sometimes crossed to the detriment of their community, separated nature from civilization. Heroes such as Achilles or Oedipus tried to push boundaries between genders, establishing a type of super-masculinity, only to learn that mature masculinity and civilized existence in particular combined both masculine and feminine elements. Age, another boundary, privileged youthful manhood but left old men deficient. Finally, there were boundaries between the divine and the human, where the power of the gods or fate threatened the masculine desiderata of controlling oneself and others. |
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In the first chapter, "Imagining Men," Van Nortwick explores heroic masculine ideals in the Gilgamesh epic and Homer, and argues that, in order to grow into patriarchal masculinity, the heroes needed to separate themselves from the world of their mothers. Being a hero also meant separating from society in order to return to it as a hero. The myth of Demeter and Persephone shows how much more traumatic separation from the mother was for females. The second chapter, on young men, focuses on the characters of Telemachus, son of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey, and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles in Sophocles' play, Philoctetes. Young Telemachus learns masculinity through experiences such as journeys abroad and cooperation with his father in regaining control over his household. Yet his emerging masculinity also created tensions in the father-son relationship between him and Odysseus. Neoptolemus, by contrast, had to choose between two father figures: the dishonest Odysseus and the straight-shooter Achilles. The third chapter, "Men and Women," introduces the reader to the major qualities separating the masculine from the feminine in Greek thought. The author uses both bbbbschylus' trilogy, the Oresteia, and Euripides' Medea to discuss men and women who transgress gender boundaries. The relationships between Trojan hero Hector, Odysseus, and their respective wives show how male heroes negotiated the sometimes conflicting demands of family and community, and how love and mutual respect bridged over gender differences. Chapter four discusses men and war, which Van Nortwick sees as the crucible of masculinity. Characters such as Ajax in Homer and Sophocles, and Athenian citizens in Pericles' funeral oration, exemplify how traditional individual masculinity evolved into a collective masculinity that came from serving the polis. Chapter five deals with the relations between gods, fate, and men. Oedipus and the tyrannical ruler of Thebes in Euripides' Bacchae show the limits set by supernatural forces on masculinity and how adhering to super-masculinity defeated men. The concluding chapter discusses masculinity and old age. Homeric old men demonstrate that they can be powerful by guiding others toward mature masculinity. Old heroes in Euripides' Heraclidae and Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonos show various ways of attaining heroic status despite their feebleness and dependence on others. |
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The greatest challenge that faces an investigator of ancient Greek masculinity is defining its limits. The concept was all-encompassing and its meaning could change according to context, period, or genre. Van Nortwick's choice to discuss masculine ideals in Greek epics and drama is both legitimate and understandable, but this, perhaps along with inevitable space constraints, necessitated leaving aside cardinal aspects of Greek masculinity such as, say, homosexuality (only cursorily described), Spartan masculinity, and manhood as depicted in Greek prose and especially art. Van Nortwick excels in literary analysis and at times, his interest in that and in how the Greeks perceived human existence produces narrative that is only indirectly relevant to the subject. Nevertheless, the book is highly recommended for teachers of the subject, especially if they accompany it with the texts the author discusses and other studies of Greek masculinity. |
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| Colby College |
Joseph Roisman |
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