Helen of Troy
From Homer to Hollywood
Chapter One
Narrating Myth
When Paris came, I let him in. What happened afterwards we all
know - at least, we know the events, but some of us are at a loss to
interpret them (Helen in John Erskine, The Private Life of Helen
of Troy)
To tell a story is to try to understand it (H. Porter Abbott, Narrative)
Stories never live alone. They are branches of a family that we have
to trace back and forward (Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of
Cadmus and Harmony)
Whose Story?
In her wide-ranging account of Helen of Troy as "goddess, princess,
whore," Bettany Hughes writes that "Helen found in Homer the most brilliant
of biographers," a sentiment expressed more specifically elsewhere when
she describes the Iliad as "Homer's account of Helen" (2005: 343, xxxv).
Hughes is but the most recent of many commentators who hold that the
Trojan War is Helen's story and that the Iliad is "about" Helen (e.g., West
1975: 3; Pollard 1965: 22). In fact wh ... read full excerpt from Helen of Troy: From Homer to Hollywood ebook
