Homer's Cosmic Fabrication: Choice and Design in the Iliad

“In this study Heiden offers a sophisticated and competent analysis of the Iliad. He develops his ideas step by step until he reaches a comprehensive description of the narrative structure of the poem. Heiden has written an intelligent and well-argued book. To have published a thought-provoking and new interpretation of the Iliad is in itself no mean achievement.” —Bryn Mawr Classical Review

“Heiden diverges from previous scholars who have limited their discussions of the Iliad to the work’s original function as an oral poem by discussing its merits as a written work.” —Columbia College Today

“Heiden provides a useful break from Homeric scholarship’s preoccupations with oral performance and the poetic tradition. Through close attention to the structure of the text, he identifies the definitive role of Zeus in the Iliad’s narrative and traces the growing importance of creative fabrication as the means by which both gods and humans achieve their ends. By showing how the poem’s organization fosters and rewards the activity of sense-making, Heiden illuminates the Iliad’s ongoing appeal to audiences of all types and periods.”–Sheila Murnaghan, University of Pennsylvania

“Homer’s Cosmic Fabrication is a comprehensive work of considerable originality that not only succeeds in making sense of the Iliad’s structure, but renders it in a theoretical framework that takes account of variations in the literary transaction as experienced by different readers, without sacrificing the search for a unifying (as opposed to a univocal) reading. The way Heiden argues that the poem was designed for reading adds a whole new dimension to a long-standing and heated argument and, I believe, may be effective in reorienting debate.”–John Peradotto, State University of New York at Buffalo