Becoming Achilles | Site for book, Becoming Achilles, and related topics.

Quick tour (book talk delivered at several venues)

By Richard Holway On May 17, 2014 · 1 Comment · In Uncategorized

As its title suggests, my book Becoming Achilles explores what is involved in making a certain kind of hero—a human being who manifests godlike excellence, superiority to ordinary mortals. It also explains an improbable conjunction: the archetypal Greek hero, Achilles, a paragon of violent hyper-masculinity, is a precursor of Socrates. Achilles is a plain speaker, [...]

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Review in Polis

By Richard Holway On February 1, 2014 · Add Comment · In Reviews, Uncategorized

Richard Holway, Becoming Achilles: Child-Sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the Iliad and Beyond (Lanham MD; Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2012), xiv + 255 pp., $29.95, ISBN 9780739146910 (pbk). Richard Holway’s Becoming Achilles fits into a rich vein of scholarship on the ancient world in which the concepts of psychology or psychoanalysis are used to interrogate classical [...]

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New book places child sacrifice at heart of Athenian culture

On February 1, 2014 By Richard Holway

Review of The Parthenon Enigma by Joan Breton Connelly http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/books/review/the-parthenon-enigma-by-joan-breton-connelly.html?referrer=

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Bryn Mawr Classical Review

On January 4, 2013 By Richard Holway

Richard Holway, Becoming Achilles: Child-Sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the Iliad and Beyond. Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches.Lanham, MD; Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2012. Pp. xiv, 255. ISBN 9780739146910. $29.95 (pb).Reviewed by Sonya Nevin, University of Roehampton (sonya.nevin@roehampton.ac.uk) There exists a view that in order to be truly great you must sacrifice domestic happiness, perhaps even [...]

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Review in Choice

On October 1, 2012 By Richard Holway

Holway, Richard. Becoming Achilles: child-sacrifice, war, and misrule in the Iliad and beyond. Lexington Books, 2012. 255p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780739146910 pbk, $25.95. Reviewed in 2012jul CHOICE. Holway’s evaluation of the Iliad in light of attachment theory and Freudian [...]

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PsycCRITIQUES Review–Critiqued

On September 30, 2012 By Richard Holway

PsycCRITIQUES February 6, 2013, Vol. 58, No. 6, Article 7 A Hero’s Aesthetics A Review of Becoming Achilles: Child-Sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the Iliad and Beyond by Richard Holway Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. 255 pp. ISBN 978-0-7391-4691-0 (paperback) $29.95. Reviewed by Spyros D. Orfanos Why are we moved to tears by a fictional [...]

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Extract regarding daughters who become mothers of heroes

On September 21, 2012 By Richard Holway

Being desired by Zeus over Hera elevates Thetis to an anomalous position above Zeus’s jealous consort, who claims to be “highest and best” of the goddesses. The same is true of paramours Demeter and Leto who produce glorious sons. All actually or potentially displace Hera in Zeus’s bed. For Thetis, whom Hera claims as a [...]

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Program on attachment and academic success

On September 15, 2012 By Richard Holway

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/474/back-to-school Some glimmers of hope regarding how children from very stressful environments can succeed academically from Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. Makes use of attachment theory, including the Minnesota study that figures heavily in Becoming Achilles, to explain [...]

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Extract regarding Achilles’ learning through suffering

On September 12, 2012 By Richard Holway

Similar considerations apply to tragic learning through suffering, pathei mathos, a prototype of which Achilles undergoes in the Iliad. The death of his dear companion, Patroklos, brings home to Achilles the value of the life he sacrifices to glory. But killing Patroklos is Zeus’s way of redirecting Achilles’ anger from Agamemnon to the Trojans. It [...]

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Extract regarding Achilles (& Socrates): speaking truth to power?

On September 12, 2012 By Richard Holway

This analysis calls in question cherished mainstays of Western culture. Achilles is not merely the best, most terrifying fighter in the Achaian army. He presents a shining example of the courage to speak truth to power and the independence of mind to question traditional verities. He calls to account a commander who sacrifices his troops, [...]

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Quick tour (book talk delivered at several venues)

Review in Polis

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Review in Choice

PsycCRITIQUES Review–Critiqued

Extract regarding daughters who become mothers of heroes

Extract regarding Achilles’ learning through suffering

Extract regarding Achilles (& Socrates): speaking truth to power?

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